...thoughts on music...
07 02 07 - 07:55. Category: default
On February 7, 2007, Apple's chief executive, Steve Jobs, posted a few thoughts on music, including the idea that if the music recording industry would "abolish DRMs entirely," Apple "would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store."Jobs proposes that we imagine "a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple..."
Jobs makes a number of interesting points, but his emphasis seems to be primarily on heading-off potential anti-trust and anti-trust-like challenges from Europe to Apple's dominance in the portable music player market and how sales of the ipod are closely tied to the iTunes music store.
I would have preferred that Jobs make more persuasive arguments against the use of DRM than he did. Once you get over the euphoria of having Jobs come out against DRM and measure his argument for what it says, the argument seems rather simplistic and inconsequential; the concession that if a copyright holder (the music recording company) stopped requiring a licensee (Apple) use DRM, then the licensee would stop using it isn't much of an argument against the use of DRM. As for the comparisons between what music companies do online with what they do in selling CDs without DRM, this point only goes so far in that it could be used to suggest that the music industry tighten up its protection of music on CDs. There are better arguments to make and perhaps Jobs has started a new dialog on the misguided use of DRM in music distribution.
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