People with legitimate uses will demand the ability to make digital copies of their digital recordings, and so eventually the electronics industry will go along. This is my prediction. Anyway, the recorded music industry will not be able to hold their technical copy-prevention position in the long run. They may be able to stop digital radio, which could appear within a few years, but digital TV comes with high quality stereo digital sound. TV is stronger than the music industry. Once all that beautiful digital data is delivered by broadcast, it will be just plain technically infeasible to prevent people from copying it. The cat has escaped.
[They’re still trying! I’m amazed at the politics of copy protection.]
updated 28 June 2000