2008 Woodie Awards
Apple on the right side of the digital rights debate
Nathan Harrison, Staff Writer
Issue date: 2/20/07
Last Updated: 8/9/07
In an open letter posted on Apple's Web site two weeks ago, Apple CEO Steve Jobs called for the music industry to embrace the simplest route for universal usability of digital music files: abandon digital rights management, or DRM, completely. Though the letter is generically titled "Thoughts on Music," Jobs avoids generic thought and instead focuses on the debate over the technology that restricts playback of digital music files.
In Europe, Apple is facing demands from multiple courts that it "open" FairPlay, the DRM format used for files sold in the iTunes Store, over concerns that the relationship between the iPod and iTunes Store is monopolistic. It's true: If Apple shared its DRM format with competitors like Microsoft's Zune, more interoperability would be possible.
It's also a terrible idea for Apple, and Jobs knows it. Opening their DRM format puts Apple under enormous risk of losing the music licenses it holds from the "big four" - Warner, EMI, Sony BMG, and Universal - who together own the rights to more than 70 percent of all music. Apple's agreement with these companies requires that Apple fix any crack that compromises FairPlay within a matter of weeks, or any of the big four can yank their entire catalogs from the iTunes Store. More companies using FairPlay makes more cracks in the system inevitable.
So while yes, Jobs is proposing a massive shift in thinking at a time when it would protect Apple's own interests, users should embrace the end of DRM regardless of motive. Predictably, most music labels support maintaining DRM systems. An anonymous senior record executive quoted by the New York Times said in response to Jobs' letter, "we're not going to broadly license our content for unprotected digital distribution."
Yet there is a legal, DRM-less avenue open to iPod users that the music companies have no problem with people using instead of the iTunes Store - one that people like that anonymous record exec probably have no problem with. In fact, for all their paranoia about a segment of the music market that drives only 10 percent of all music sales, the major recording labels refuse to realize that their industry has been surviving via a digital, DRM-less format for more than a decade already: CDs.
In Europe, Apple is facing demands from multiple courts that it "open" FairPlay, the DRM format used for files sold in the iTunes Store, over concerns that the relationship between the iPod and iTunes Store is monopolistic. It's true: If Apple shared its DRM format with competitors like Microsoft's Zune, more interoperability would be possible.
It's also a terrible idea for Apple, and Jobs knows it. Opening their DRM format puts Apple under enormous risk of losing the music licenses it holds from the "big four" - Warner, EMI, Sony BMG, and Universal - who together own the rights to more than 70 percent of all music. Apple's agreement with these companies requires that Apple fix any crack that compromises FairPlay within a matter of weeks, or any of the big four can yank their entire catalogs from the iTunes Store. More companies using FairPlay makes more cracks in the system inevitable.
So while yes, Jobs is proposing a massive shift in thinking at a time when it would protect Apple's own interests, users should embrace the end of DRM regardless of motive. Predictably, most music labels support maintaining DRM systems. An anonymous senior record executive quoted by the New York Times said in response to Jobs' letter, "we're not going to broadly license our content for unprotected digital distribution."
Yet there is a legal, DRM-less avenue open to iPod users that the music companies have no problem with people using instead of the iTunes Store - one that people like that anonymous record exec probably have no problem with. In fact, for all their paranoia about a segment of the music market that drives only 10 percent of all music sales, the major recording labels refuse to realize that their industry has been surviving via a digital, DRM-less format for more than a decade already: CDs.
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