Steve Jobs savaged on digital rights management
Steve Jobs has been savaged by the CEO of Warner Music and prominent commentators, including one from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), after he called on music companies to ditch digital rights management (DRM) last week.
Steve seems so nice; why are people so unkind?
In a post on Apple’s web site, Jobs argued that DRM just doesn’t work:
“Though the big four music companies require that all their music sold online be protected with DRMs, these same music companies continue to sell billions of CDs a year which contain completely unprotected music. That’s right! No DRM system was ever developed for the CD, so all the music distributed on CDs can be easily uploaded to the Internet, then (illegally) downloaded and played on any computer or player,” Jobs wrote (interestingly the post doesn’t have a comment facility; gotta love that one way communication.)
“Convincing the (music companies) to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace. Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly,” Jobs concluded.
Although the EMI Group has already started looking at the possibility of selling its music in MP3 format without copy protection, others in the music industry has not been impressed with Jobs’ proposal.
Warner Music CEO, Edgar Bronfman, attacked Jobs’ during an earnings conference call saying his proposal was without merit or logic:
“We advocate the continued use of DRM. The notion that music does not deserve the same protection as software, film, video games, or other intellectual property, simply because there is an unprotected legacy product in the physical world, is completely without logic or merit.”
More interesting, was the attack on Jobs by BBC columnist Bill Thompson, who said that while we may see the end of protected music downloads, it won’t be because of Apple.
“For a company with a tiny share of the computer market and an increasingly perilous first mover advantage selling portable music players Apple punches well above its weight in coverage of its every move,” wrote Thompson.
Thompson was particularly scathing of Apple for refusing to license its Fairplay DRM system, which means that songs bought from Apple can only be played on PCs and Macs running iTunes, and on iPods. Thopson said that he didn’t believe Jobs when he said that he Apple would stop using DRM in an instant if it could.
“If Apple switched off Fair{lay then they would probably sell a lot more songs, on which they make very little money, and a lot fewer iPods, on which they make a lot,” observed Thompson.
Thompson is a Mac user, but is so unhappy with Apple that he is considering jumping to Linux.
As an aside, given Jobs’ position on DRM, Apple must have been ironic when it decided to call its DRM system “FairPlay”.
Brier Dudley at the Seattle Times also savaged Jobs in a recent column, saying that Jobs’ was calling for something that was already underway, and that he was simply posturing as European countries look into whether Apple is breaking their laws by forcing iPod owners to use iTunes.
“It curried favor with DRM-hating consumers and positioned him as an instigator. But music companies were already thinking about new approaches, such as selling copyable songs in lower fidelity MP3 formats,” wrote Dudley.
While Dudley acknowledged Jobs’ contribution to technology, he was worried by Job’s current status as technology guru.
“It may be time for the industry to start thinking about who will be its next leader. It would be nice to find someone whose values can withstand spotlights on the throne, but I’m not holding my breath.”
Despite these attacks on Jobs, he’s still the technology industry’s golden boy, even though it appears that his popularity, power and passion, are getting on some people’s nerves. Perhaps it’s time for him to take a more subdued approach, but then again, maybe that’s why he’s been so successful.
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