I strongly suspect that someone at EMI has a good sense of humor.

Many stories last week headlined that EMI is considering distributing its music without any DRM. Pretty much buried was the real story -- EMI is asking the distributors to bid on the right to engage in this activity.

In sum, it is asking companies like, say, Apple: "All right -- how much will you pay us for the privilege of distributing music in unprotected MP3 format, so that anyone who buys one copy can distribute it to several million of his closest friends over the Internet, and all future payments to you become totally voluntary?"

Perhaps the distributors will regard this as a valuable opportunity. Perhaps Steve Jobs will put in a bid of a billion dollars or so. But if he doesn't, if he comes back saying: "Do I look like a loon? Why would I pay for that?" then it will be an interesting addendum to his recent letter urging the labels to adopt precisely this strategy.