SubscribeSteve Jobs on DRM
Posted in Music, News on February 12th, 2007. By Eduard F. Vinyamata.
Apple is under pressure from the European Union. Norway wants Apple to open up their Digital Rights Management (DRM) protected songs so that the music they sell through their iTunes store can be played in any device, not only on the iPod. Last tuesday Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs, answered in an open letter regarding Apple’s position on the issue.
Jobs summarizes the current situation and presents two possible alternatives for the future. On his summary he basically blames music labels for requiring Apple to DRM protect their songs, although he gives a thumbs up on the current situation, saying customers are well served. He then goes on to present his first alternative, a world where Apple’s DRM solution is licensed to the competition. He disregards this option on the grounds that licensing such well protected secrets would surely make them more vulnerable. Coordinating an answer to a breach on their protection system, Jobs goes on to say, would also be much harder. Finally Jobs presents a second alternative, a world without DRM. He states Apple would wholeheartedly adopt this solution, should the labels agree to it.
Almost one week later we can highlight the most interesting opinions from bloggers and the answers from some of the involved parties. Microsoft, for example, was quick to answer (Via Digg) they are happy with the current situation, and that Jobs was “irresponsible, or a the very least naïve”. Norway insisted that iTunes customers have their music locked in and that it’s Apple’s responsibility, not theirs, to put pressure on labels to make DRM disappear. The Register published (Via Digg) “The slow death of DRM” about the story of DRM and why we’re better without it.
Ricardo Galli’s opinions on the letter are among the most insightful. Because his post is in Spanish, we’ll summarize it here. He points out that: If Jobs is so willing to embrace a non DRM world he could start selling Pixar movies without DRM, and probably convince Disney to do the same. He could let external developers work on the iPod. He could publish standard API’s to be able to interact with iTunes, etc. Galli also points out how Jobs fails to mention other facts such as the whole reason of writing this letter, or that maintaining a DRM system in place is much less beneficial for Apple than selling DRM free songs, or the fact that although authors and small labels have asked Apple to let them sell their songs without DRM, Apple has answered they can’t do that because of technical problems.
One day after Jobs published his letter, Chris Anderson introduced The Anderson Switch. Maybe music is the first to make the switch?
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