"My story begins in nineteen-dickety-two. We had to say dickety because the Kaiser had stolen our word twenty. I chased that rascal to get it back, but gave up after dickety-six miles."
--Abe Simpson

Just substitute "Steve Jobs" for "the Kaiser" and "pod" for "twenty", and there you go! History repeats itself.

Using DRM to create artificial scarcity for digital media can never be more than a stopgap solution.

As for the question "How will authors get paid" -- have you considered that just maybe the world might be a better place if *fewer* people were able to make a living by writing?

If you produce something that's not a good or service that tangibly contributes to human welfare, it should be harder to earn money from it. This is already the case to some extent.

I'm not saying that writing and arts and other intangibles cannot contribute to human welfare--on the contrary, they can do so in ways that ordinary goods and services cannot. What I AM saying is that 90%+ of books and CDs are steaming piles of manure written to make a buck and contribute absolutely nothing. Maybe artificial scarcity of media has made it too easy to get paid for producing something of zero worth.

If someone has a strong enough passion for writing/creating, they will create no matter what. Some of those will be recognized and compensated in their lifetimes, and others will not. Of course, it's not "fair". But is it less fair than the way the big publishers, who rely absolutely on scarcity, treat content creators now?

I still feel the quality of discourse in society would greatly improve if the only people who were writers were people who were at least willing to be poor for it.

Bah-weep-Graaaaagnah wheep ni ni bong! (Ref)

Can't believe no one posted that one yet.