02.10.07
Steve Jobs and DRM
Steve Jobs had an interesting, and somewhat surprising message about iTunes’ DRM. To quickly summarize, he says that Apple would be perfectly willing to have DRM-free songs, if only the music labels would allow it.
I have to agree with DVD Jon’s position; Steve Jobs is looking out for Apple, and is just using his reality distortion field to make it seem as though he’s fighting the good fight.
And, frankly, from Apple’s point of view, this is a wonderful idea; he’s phrasing the iTunes DRM issue as, “We’d be happy to sell MP3s, but the record companies won’t let us.”, instead of, “We don’t want to have a DRM that everyone uses; that’d make it easier for users to use a non-Apple MP3 player.”.
This is important because Apple is currently fighting with several European countries about the fact that their DRM won’t work on other company’s players. So, Steve’s pretending to take the high road might help him fend off the governments trying to crack Apple’s dominance.
That said, I hope he succeeds. I hope he succeeds with his reality distortion, as it frames the debate as being restrictive DRM versus no DRM. That means that, eventually, if Apple has near total control over the digital music industry, the record companies will release more things as MP3s, because they don’t want to be beholden to Apple.
The thing is, DRM is always annoying, as that’s the point; DRM’s purpose is to stop you from doing what you want to do. And, frankly, if you want to do illegal things, you’d be much better off stopping at my library, borrowing some CDs, and ripping the songs yourself. It’s hard to trace, easier to use, of whatever quality you desire, and is free. Or you could use one of the file-sharing programs; it’s only the legal, above-board users who get to be treated like law-breakers.
So go, Mr. Jobs; make the world think that you’re leading the fight against DRM. Maybe eventually the people will know what “DRM” stands for, or at least that it’s a bad thing that we don’t want.