iTunes U 2.0 to be DRMed?

According to this article (with some great comments) at The Unofficial Apple Weblog. Apparently it’s the unis themselves that are wanting DRM. Ok, fair enough if you think about it – that way they can control who gets access and maybe make a little coin on some courses. But one of the things that I thought would have been , there might be very little interest among students at one institution wanting to pick up lectures from another – though I can see it happening for many reasons – transfers being one. But I can also see researchers trying to use it as a way to audit classes that they are interested in. But if DRM drops – then it may lock out students and faculty in all sorts of ways.

Some of the other suggestions are good for what may come in iTU2.0 – including onsite storage (great for non American unis that want to try – avoiding the legal headache of having Canadian personal data freely snoopable by American officials) and in the end DRM may be a non issue if the majority of the users never listen to anything other than what they need to from their own programs.