The RIAA’s lawyer responding to the suggestion that users should be allowed to strip DRM from tracks if the server has been taken down.

“We reject the view,” he writes in a letter to the top legal advisor at the Copyright Office, “that copyright owners and their licensees are required to provide consumers with perpetual access to creative works. No other product or service providers are held to such lofty standards. No one expects computers or other electronics devices to work properly in perpetuity, and there is no reason that any particular mode of distributing copyrighted works should be required to do so.”

So yes, if you buy a DRM protected track online, the music industry believes that you should not expect to be able to listen to that track in perpetuity.  Buy a CD or an LP, and you will expect that to last until you damage it. Buy a DRM protected MP3, and you can expect it to last until the provider decides that it is no longer in its best interests to continue to provide the service.

Does anyone see any incentive to temporarily license DRM protected music?

From Ars Technica.