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Speaking at the Digital Hollywood conference, David Hughes, who heads Recording Industry Association of America's technology unit, pointed to the continuing pervasiveness of DRM, despite the launch of restriction-free services such as Amazon MP3 and iTunes Plus.

"I made a list of the 22 ways to sell music, and 20 of them still require DRM," said Hughes. "Any form of subscription service or limited play-per-view or advertising offer still requires DRM. So DRM is not dead."

Unfortunately for Hughes and the major record companies that the RIAA represents, consumers have to date shown little, if any, interest, in services that are utterly reliant on DRM. Napster's eat-all-you-can service, for example, has acquired just 760,000 subscribers in the three years since it launched.

Nonetheless Hughes insisted that "there will be a movement towards subscription services" and a consequent shift back in favour of DRM.

But another speaker on the same panel disagreed. Rajan Samtani, director of business development at watermarking technology firm Digimar, said it was time to give up.

"These kids have too many ways to get around DRM," he said.