Apple Inc.’s iTunes Store started selling songs without digital-rights management, or DRM, technology — copy-protection software that limits where songs can be played. The unrestricted content means some songs will work on players other than the iPod. The DRM-free tracks cost $1.29 each, 30 cents more than the usual price of songs at iTunes. Separately, Apple today said it created an area on iTunes to offer free course lectures, language lessons and sports highlights from universities including Stanford and Duke. Apple expects more than half of the 5 million songs on iTunes to be offered in the DRM-free format by the end of the year, Jobs said today. EMI’s DRM-free catalog numbers in the “hundreds of thousands” of songs, the company said. The DRM-free songs are twice as large as the copy-protected version and may take twice as long to download depending on the speed of customers’ Internet connections, Cue said.

The another news about Apple is its new video deal with Google’s YouTube. Apple agreed to carry clips from Google Inc.’s YouTube starting in June, using the world’s most popular online video service to attract customers for its two-month-old digital-television box. The feature works with Apple TV, a $299 device that transmits movies and shows over a wireless connection to widescreen sets, the Cupertino, Calif. -based company said yesterday in a statement. Apple also introduced a higher-capacity model of the box. Chief executive Steve Jobs began selling Apple TV in March, challenging Microsoft Corp. and cable companies such as Comcast in delivering movies and TV shows to viewers . YouTube will offer “thousands” of videos next month, adding more until all are available later this year, Apple said. I’m pretty sure these 160 millions of YouTube users will do some help…

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