Sony boss admits mistakes on copy protection

As the music industry continues its inevitable trudge towards a largely DRM-free future, there's likely to be plenty of hat-eating and humble-pie feasting from execs, blogged joyously yet scornfully by the geek press.Latest on the rack is Sony boss Howard Stringer, who has admitted “if we had gone with open technology from the start, I think we probably would have beaten Apple”. He's referring to Apple's success in making the iPod to digital music what the Walkman was to the cassette tape.Sony spent years forcing users of its digital music devices to contend with the closed, proprietary ATRAC format as opposed to the more popular MP3 format that the iPod has always supported. “We can no longer say that we're right and our customers are wrong”, says Stringer. “We can''t only build what we want to build.”And that's a good thing, because some of what Sony previously wanted to build – particularly the now-defunct Connect store and its compatible software – was so dire that Steve Jobs might wince into his turtleneck.