Apple plans to open up protected music and movies content bought from the iTunes Store , Tech.co.uk has learned.

The iPod maker is expected to make two announcements, possibly as early as this week - the first will be to allow streaming of protected AAC content via USB; the second will be to licence its Fairplay DRM to the company's Made For iPod licencees.

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Netgear became the first company to support FairPlay streaming with the launch of its EVA8000 Digital Entertainer HD at the Consumer Electronics Show ( CES ) last week.

According to tech.co.uk this could be a move to defend against the expanding catalog of companies releasing Zune accessories. We'll see how far the Apple's DRM (FairPlay) will go and the answer of Microsoft on this. Right now Zune can stream content to the Xbox but not to other products.

EDIT: David Caulton of the Zune team, says this way Apple will stream digital content to verified accessories which won't "capture" the stream. The decoding of the DRM still will happen on the iPod. This way superior digital sound is sent to the compatible accessories instead of the analog. The 3rd party device then decodes the digital stream to analog and may show album art or other info on it. Read David's article for more.

[via tech.co.uk ]