RIAA tech chief David Hughes seemed to be channelling Obi-Wan Kenobi yesterday when he said that DRM is "coming back and will be more powerful than we can possibly imagine."

Most people thought that when Sony BMG gave up on DRM it was deader than Mark Hamill's film career. Basically Hughes thinks that for subscription based music systems to be effective they still need DRM in one from or another.

Since subscription services are where we're headed DRM is still needed, he argued. It looks like the Force is too strong in this form of control.