sony got massive bad publicity from a 'root kit' it used in one of it's forays into drm for cd's - this knocked massive holes in windows security, not sure if they got sued or what though.
slim and apple are competitors, apple has it';s airport and itv and slim has the squeezebox - one is crippled by drm the other isn;t.
my preferred combination of squeezebox and flac means that everything is totally open source and therefore cannot EVER be bunged up by drm and some accountant telling me when and where i can listen to music. i can transcode flac into whatever portable format i like (currently un-drmed wma 128) and listen to it on whatever device i want to use - phone, archos, creative nano.
i own all the cd's i;ve ripped so i;ve paid my dues.