Great article. It's not just online music, its online MEDIA (music, movies, books, games)
Maybe it's time that a law was passed that required all companies that sold DRM'd material to store the ownership records and setup authentication servers at a third party license distributor that guaranteed access to those licenses up to X years after the company that sold you the DRM'd material went belly up. I know, highly improbable, but one can only hope.
That's why I don't buy electronic DRM'd music/movies/games/books anymore. I will rent them, but no longer buy them because they're never really mine. When B&N closed down their MS Reader bookstore, and left me with a few encrypted e-books that I had to backup manually and had to keep on begging Microsoft for more MSReader licenses because I change PPC phones and PC's quite often, I said never again. Download a game from steam and have it not work when the steam authentication servers are down? Nope, I ain't gonna do it.
Honestly, the way things are going now, Apple could suddenly close down iTunes.com today and open up uMoronsWeScrewedULemmingsMusicStore.com tomorrow and require iTunes customers to repurchase all their DRM'd music and break no laws. :-< They *did* allow you to back up all your AAC files onto CD's in CD-AUDIO form, so it's your fault if you didn't do it and you broke your IPOD.