Steve Jobs wants to end Digital Rights Management, also known as DRM. In an open letter to the tech community he explains his rationale outlining three possible courses of action for the music industry: keep the status quo, let Apple license its form of DRM, FairPlay, more widely, or essentially abolish DRM completely.
Jobs argues that DRM hasn’t worked and it probably won’t work because it’s so easy to break and impossible to stop once it’s broken. He willingly says that if the music industry abolishes DRM, Apple will eagerly comply and make iTunes DRM free.
I brought this issue up with the launch of Wal-Mart’s new online video site. As predicted, it’s gone over very poorly, because the DRM for online movies heavily restricts where you can watch movies that you purchased. It defeats the purpose of easily transferable digital content. Why buy online with tons of restrictions when you can simply buy a physical DVD with no restrictions.
Device-specific DRM makes no sense. Content almost consistently outlives the devices we play it on. Music you purchased twenty years ago is still not playing on the same stereo you owned twenty years ago. With DRM, content you purchase today can only be played on a specific device today requiring you to be locked into that manufacturer’s devices in the future. How absurd would it be had you purchased an album that could only be played on a Kenwood stereo.
It is for this reason people aren’t really jumping on the digital download bandwagon when a purchase comes with all these restrictions. Because of music industry imposed DRM, physical media still outpaces digital media in convenience.
According to Jobs’ data from iPod sales and sales on iTunes, only 3% of the music on an iPod has DRM. That means the other 97% doesn’t have DRM. What does that tell you? That the public doesn’t want limitations on their music even when it has liberal use policies like Apple’s FairPlay technology has.
Jobs argues that while people may complain about the iTunes+iPod lock in, usage shows that that is simply not the case. He argues that DRM requires secrets to be passed around. And that these secrets never hold as just a single leak can be spread across the Internet in just a minute.
Anyway, the Web is floating with theories as to why Jobs did this and they’re all appearing to be political moves on his part. He’s in DRM trouble in Europe, most notably Norway. He’s up for contract renewal with the major labels. He’s trying to brand himself as the leading voice on the anti-DRM movement which has already been going on for years. I think it’s a great move by Jobs. We could all learn from him on how to play the digerati on our side.
