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Steve Jobs' "Thoughts on Music" - A Call To End DRM
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2007-02-06 16:58:20
Today, Steve Jobs responded to calls for Apple to open up FairPlay, the digital rights management (DRM) technology the company created for use in the iTunes Store, by posting his thoughts on DRM, the industry, and Apple's future in music sales in a document entitled "Thoughts on Music" at Apple.com.
Within, Jobs explains, to those unaware, that the iPod and iTunes are quite capable of playing open, unprotected music and reveals that, in fact, only 3% of the music (on average) on each of the more than 90 million iPods out there is DRM protected.
Jobs goes on to describe what he sees as the three potential paths to Apple's future in the music arena:
1) "...to continue on the current course, with each manufacturer competing freely with their own 'top to bottom' proprietary systems for selling, playing and protecting music."''
2) "...for Apple to license its FairPlay DRM technology to current and future competitors with the goal of achieving interoperability between different company’s players and music stores." However, "the most serious problem is that licensing a DRM involves disclosing some of its secrets to many people in many companies, and history tells us that inevitably these secrets will leak. .... Apple has concluded that if it licenses FairPlay to others, it can no longer guarantee to protect the music it licenses from the big four music companies"
3) "...to abolish DRMs entirely...any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players...clearly the best alternative for consumers...Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat..." if the big-four labels would agree to DRM-free music.
The Apple CEO points out that while 2 billion DRM-protected songs were sold worldwide in online music stores, over 20 billion songs were sold completely devoid of DRM on CDs. Jobs questions the urgent need felt by the labels to so strongly protect just 10% of their music sales at the price of open flexibility for the listener. He calls out for those unhappy with the current situation to persuade the big lables to sell their music DRM-free.
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