Steve Jobs comes out against DRM

[Durandal]

Steve Jobs has written a 2,000 word essay regarding his thoughts on DRM and its place in the music business, revealing certain details about Apple's contracts with the labels and why Apple uses DRM.

It's a very interesting read.

[Praxis]

Great read, and I wholeheartedly agree. It's idiotic that music companies insist on DRM on music stores when they sell the same songs on CD; pirates will just download those songs, it makes no difference.

I also thought the last paragraph was funny. It was clearly directed at the French government that is taking Apple to court claiming their DRM is illegal.

[R. U. Serious]

That Steve Jobs guy is a sneaky bastard, you have to give him that.

He's getting flack for not licencing DRM to other manufacturers, and so he shifts the debate away from that "little" fact, and deflects people to a DRM vs. No-DRM debate and how the music companies make that call.

Here the argument is made more eloquent:
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1117

Much as I would like to see Apple renounce DRM entirely, that’s not quite what Jobs is saying. The letter describes three possible futures for Apple’s music technology: (1) continue the current path with a closed Apple-only DRM system; (2) license Apple’s DRM technology to other companies to build compatible systems; and (3) sell DRM-free music.

Apple’s preferred outcome, Jobs says, is outcome (3), selling DRM-free music. This is notable, and somewhat surprising, as the consensus has been that Apple strategy has been to seek outcome (1), using its proprietary DRM to lock customers in to its iTunes-iPod world. If Apple really prefers to eliminate DRM, that is news.

But this part of the letter might just be cheap talk. As Jobs points out in the letter, Apple sells music at the pleasure of the record companies. And if the record companies announce tomorrow that they don’t want Apple to use DRM, then Apple will have little choice but to smile and go along.

So there is little downside to Apple saying that they they willing to get rid of DRM. In this respect, Apple is like the kid who says he is willing to go to the dentist, because he knows that no matter what he says he’s going to see the dentist whenever his parents want him to.

The least-discussed aspect of the letter is its praise for the status quo (outcome (1)). Jobs says that the current system is working well:

[...]

His real scorn is for outcome (2), where Apple licenses its DRM technology to other companies. It’s easy to see why this is the worst outcome for Apple — the company loses its ability to lock in customers, but everybody still has to put up with the cost and hassle of using DRM.

What the letter really does, in typical Jobsian fashion, is frame the debate. It does this in two respects. First, it sets up a choice between two alternatives: stay the course, or get rid of DRM entirely. Second, it points the finger at the major record companies as the ones making the choice.

This is both a clever PR move and a proactive defense against European antitrust scrutiny. Mandatory licensing is a typical antitrust remedy in situations like this, so Apple wants to take licensing off the table as an option. Most of all, Apple wants to deflect the blame for the current situation onto the record companies. Steve Jobs is a genius at this sort of thing, and it looks like he will succeed again.

WHy is the ITMS nt selling DRM and non-DRM music side by side, if that's what Jobs wants? Why is it forcing the DRM even on labels/musicians that are sold through ITMS, when they have already asked Jobs to sell their music without DRM (which was declined)?

[Vendetta]

Probably because the labels that do want to force the plague onto people would get cold feet if even some of their competitors' stuff was uninfected.

They might well be caught in an all or nothing scenario.

[RThurmont]

Right now, its rather hypocritical of Jobs to criticise the music industry for using DRM when Apple uses a TPM chip to prevent people from installing slOwS X on non-Apple hardware. I seriously wonder how much of slOwS X's functionality is debilitated by that retarded feature.

When Jobs removes DRM from iTunes, provides software to allow users to automatically strip the DRM off of their existing song collections, and removes the DRM from OS X, then I will applaud this move of his. Right now though, its obviously just political maneuvering to try to get Apple out of the frying pan in Europe. Apple has a business incentive to maintain the iTunes-iPod lockdown, at all costs.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

He heavily profited from DRM and now says he is against it. Only a die-hard Apple fan would think he's speaking the truth. Ridiculous.

[Seggybop]

Right now, its rather hypocritical of Jobs to criticise the music industry for using DRM when Apple uses a TPM chip to prevent people from installing slOwS X on non-Apple hardware.

Agreed, that was my first thought. If Jobs is actually against DRM, what's the OS X lockout doing there? Apple can't blame anyone but itself for that.

[Xisiqomelir]

I see everyone after Praxis skipped the part where iTMS music makes up 2.2% of all music on iPods. And the part (not in the letter), where the iPod margins vastly outweigh the iTMS margins (again, thanks to the RIAA).

[Stark]

Right now, its rather hypocritical of Jobs to criticise the music industry for using DRM when Apple uses a TPM chip to prevent people from installing slOwS X on non-Apple hardware. I seriously wonder how much of slOwS X's functionality is debilitated by that retarded feature.

When Jobs removes DRM from iTunes, provides software to allow users to automatically strip the DRM off of their existing song collections, and removes the DRM from OS X, then I will applaud this move of his. Right now though, its obviously just political maneuvering to try to get Apple out of the frying pan in Europe. Apple has a business incentive to maintain the iTunes-iPod lockdown, at all costs.

Isn't the iTMS thing part of the deal with record companies to put their content on it? Apple does some pretty questionable things with DRM (I hadn't even heard of the OSX lockout you mention), but I'm pretty sure getting so many companies on-board for iTunes would have required some kind of DRM as a sop to paranoid executives.

[Glocksman]

[DarkSilver]

Jobs quiet clearly states in his posting that in order for Apple to get access to those titles to have them available in the iTunes store, the RIAA required them to have some form of DRM on each file. It was not a Apple decision on that part.

did 95% of the rest of you ignore that portion of it to just spout "Rawr! Apple DRM's it's OS! Dey is da hipocrites of DRM!!!"?

Personally, I see DRM''d music as being idiotic - especially as Praxis pointed out in this thread - those same songs are readily available in a non-DRM'd format from the record company themselves. But then again, DRM arguments and debates have been done over in excess by now.

[Glocksman]

Jobs quiet clearly states in his posting that in order for Apple to get access to those titles to have them available in the iTunes store, the RIAA required them to have some form of DRM on each file. It was not a Apple decision on that part.

did 95% of the rest of you ignore that portion of it to just spout "Rawr! Apple DRM's it's OS! Dey is da hipocrites of DRM!!!"?

Personally, I see DRM''d music as being idiotic - especially as Praxis pointed out in this thread - those same songs are readily available in a non-DRM'd format from the record company themselves. But then again, DRM arguments and debates have been done over in excess by now.

And did you miss the part where Apple is using DRM against the wishes of some of the artists and labels?

[Stark]

In other words, Apple is selling DRM'd music despite Nettwerk's preference that they don't. If any company is being bullied into using DRM, it's Nettwerk by Apple, not the other way around.

Ah, but that's two types of DRM: the Apple-profit DRM and the 'trying to limit copying' DRM. Sure, record companies would prefer if more people could use it (and Fairplay etc is utter bullshit) but I really would have thought they'd be all cackling and evil and refuse to provide their music without some 'protection' or something (however useless).

[Durandal]

Right now, its rather hypocritical of Jobs to criticise the music industry for using DRM when Apple uses a TPM chip to prevent people from installing slOwS X on non-Apple hardware. I seriously wonder how much of slOwS X's functionality is debilitated by that retarded feature.

Currently-shipping Macs do not have the TPM chip, and the ones that did have it never used it. Merely including a TPM chip doesn't mean they're evil. It depends on how they use the TPM. Amazingly enough, there are some very nice things you can do with a TPM, like encrypt data with a key that cannot be stolen because it resides on the TPM chip and is not readable by software. But actually understanding technology as opposed to spewing FUD might intrude on your knee-jerking session.

Besides that, operating systems and music are completely different products. Saying that, if one is opposed to DRM on music, he must be opposed to any and all restrictions on any and all software is just absurd. Where the hell are you people when Avid releases a new machine and doesn't let you install their software on your custom white-box PC? You don't have any guaranteed rights by Fair Use provisions to install Mac OS X on your home-built PC. You do have a right to back up music that you buy. That is the legitimate end which DRM impedes in the music industry. There is no "legitimate end" as far as operating systems are concerned beyond what the creator of that OS says is legitimate.

Aside from that, right now, the only thing preventing you from installing OS X on a white box is the fact that Apple does not sell Tiger for Intel in a retail box, that EFI motherboards aren't all that common and a lack of third-party hardware support. It's illegal to run OS X on non-Apple hardware, but there are no explicit software barriers as far as I'm aware. There are parts available, and you can buy them if you want. Of course, Apple is under no obligation to support your custom configuration, nor are they obliged to make sure software updates actually work on your configuration if it's not from them.

When Jobs removes DRM from iTunes, provides software to allow users to automatically strip the DRM off of their existing song collections, and removes the DRM from OS X, then I will applaud this move of his. Right now though, its obviously just political maneuvering to try to get Apple out of the frying pan in Europe. Apple has a business incentive to maintain the iTunes-iPod lockdown, at all costs.

If Apple really wanted to lock iPod buyers into the iTunes Music Store, they could go about it in a much easier and cheaper fashion, i.e. ripping CDs and applying DRM to them automatically. Or automatically applying DRM to imported MP3's. This would give Apple a DRM lock-in over a far greater portion of the average iPod user's music collection than just the iTunes Music Store. And they wouldn't have to worry about the record labels hanging the threat of pulling their music collection and killing the distribution contract. Nor would they have to support the infrastructure for the music store.

But yeah, Apple's benefited so heavily from iTMS DRM. On top of the slim profit made on each song, they get the glorious responsibility of playing cat-and-mouse with DRM hackers. A game which they have to win within a matter of weeks lest their entire music catalogue gets yanked. What a brilliant position they're in.

Hell, a good portion of iPod users probably have never bought music online. And what constitutes being "locked in" to the average user? If he wants to buy a non-iPod music player, he's free to. And he can load his iTMS music on the new player by burning a CD of that music and re-ripping. Wow, look at what a great job Apple's doing locking people in! They'll have no choice but to buy an iPod! No choice at all! And before you cry about lost quality, please remember that the average person doesn't notice, just like the average person doesn't care about Ogg Vorbis. If the consumer doesn't care, he won't feel locked in, and thus won't be pressured to buy an iPod.

Jobs sincerely believes he has the best music player in the world. Why the hell would he think he needs to lock anyone into anything? People buy iPods because they like them, not because of some ridiculous "lock in" myth that forces average iPod users to keep buying iPods.

I seriously don't get this "Steve Jobs is just lying to appease the EU!" crap. He makes the same arguments made by anti-DRM people, comes to the same conclusions and explains why Apple can't distribute music on the iTMS without DRM or license their own. And then he proposes the solution that all the anti-DRM people embrace ... so he's a lying sack of shit?

He's agreeing with you, morons.

[Durandal]

In other words, Apple is selling DRM'd music despite Nettwerk's preference that they don't. If any company is being bullied into using DRM, it's Nettwerk by Apple, not the other way around.

If Apple allows flexibility in their DRM schemes (different schemes for different labels), you can bet that the Big Four would start demanding different rights for different songs, like what's going on with the Zune store and the ability to squirt. That's what Apple wants to avoid. Think about what a hardline stance Jobs took with the RIAA over the $0.99 price for songs. You can't give these people any room.

Ah, but that's two types of DRM: the Apple-profit DRM and the 'trying to limit copying' DRM. Sure, record companies would prefer if more people could use it (and Fairplay etc is utter bullshit) but I really would have thought they'd be all cackling and evil and refuse to provide their music without some 'protection' or something (however useless).

They provide all of their music completely unprotected in the form of CDs. And the DRM is applied to each song file on the fly when it's downloaded from iTunes.

[Praxis]

Right now, its rather hypocritical of Jobs to criticise the music industry for using DRM when Apple uses a TPM chip to prevent people from installing slOwS X on non-Apple hardware. I seriously wonder how much of slOwS X's functionality is debilitated by that retarded feature.

First of all, slOwS X is even worse than Micro$oft. It's hard to read.

Secondly, OS X isn't actually using the TPM chip for any sort of DRM activity, you retard. Non-Apple hardware all use a BIOS instead of EFI, at least in the retail arena.

I don't think I can say anything Durandal hasn't.

[Praxis]

You don't have any guaranteed rights by Fair Use provisions to install Mac OS X on your home-built PC. You do have a right to back up music that you buy. That is the legitimate end which DRM impedes in the music industry.

If you think that's an impediment, what about DVD's?
DVD encryption should be illegal; it has no purpose other than to criminalize Fair Use provisions by making it illegal to back up (because it is illegal to break the encryption). But that's a whole different topic entirely.

[Stark]

]Ah, but that's two types of DRM: the Apple-profit DRM and the 'trying to limit copying' DRM. Sure, record companies would prefer if more people could use it (and Fairplay etc is utter bullshit) but I really would have thought they'd be all cackling and evil and refuse to provide their music without some 'protection' or something (however useless).

They provide all of their music completely unprotected in the form of CDs. And the DRM is applied to each song file on the fly when it's downloaded from iTunes.

I think if they could, record companies would load CDs down with all the DRM they could (like Sony tried to do). I don't know the history of iTMS, but I'd assumed the record companies weren't exactly happy to jump into the concept.

[Uraniun235]

You don't have any guaranteed rights by Fair Use provisions to install Mac OS X on your home-built PC. You do have a right to back up music that you buy. That is the legitimate end which DRM impedes in the music industry. There is no "legitimate end" as far as operating systems are concerned beyond what the creator of that OS says is legitimate.

So, if the music industry were to release music under a license forbidding people to play it via certain means, that would be totally kosher with you? Because I don't see why Apple should get to dictate to me what hardware I can run their software on.

(And I'm not terribly interested in what "copyright law" says about the subject because we all know US copyright law is fucked up.)

[Glocksman]

]Ah, but that's two types of DRM: the Apple-profit DRM and the 'trying to limit copying' DRM. Sure, record companies would prefer if more people could use it (and Fairplay etc is utter bullshit) but I really would have thought they'd be all cackling and evil and refuse to provide their music without some 'protection' or something (however useless).

They provide all of their music completely unprotected in the form of CDs. And the DRM is applied to each song file on the fly when it's downloaded from iTunes.

I think if they could, record companies would load CDs down with all the DRM they could (like Sony tried to do). I don't know the history of iTMS, but I'd assumed the record companies weren't exactly happy to jump into the concept.

They weren't and still aren't.
The only reason most audio CD's don't have a bullshit DRM scheme is that the official Red Book audio CD spec doesn't include one and makes no allowance for it.
Thus most of the copy protection schemes for CD's actually make them unplayable in a lot of standalone CD audio players, never mind a PC's optical drive.
Schemes that don't violate the redbook standard have their own drawbacks, such as the infamous Sony rootkit debacle.

DVD Audio discs do have a copy protection scheme called CPPM, but it's been cracked.

[Lost Soal]

You don't have any guaranteed rights by Fair Use provisions to install Mac OS X on your home-built PC. You do have a right to back up music that you buy. That is the legitimate end which DRM impedes in the music industry. There is no "legitimate end" as far as operating systems are concerned beyond what the creator of that OS says is legitimate.

So, if the music industry were to release music under a license forbidding people to play it via certain means, that would be totally kosher with you? Because I don't see why Apple should get to dictate to me what hardware I can run their software on.

(And I'm not terribly interested in what "copyright law" says about the subject because we all know US copyright law is fucked up.)

You mean like computer game publishers can dictate the hardware and system you use by saying that you will have buy an xbox 360 to play Halo? Or you can wait another 2 years to play it on PC, as long as you use a machine with Windows Vista on it.

[Edi]

You don't have any guaranteed rights by Fair Use provisions to install Mac OS X on your home-built PC. You do have a right to back up music that you buy. That is the legitimate end which DRM impedes in the music industry. There is no "legitimate end" as far as operating systems are concerned beyond what the creator of that OS says is legitimate.

So, if the music industry were to release music under a license forbidding people to play it via certain means, that would be totally kosher with you? Because I don't see why Apple should get to dictate to me what hardware I can run their software on.

(And I'm not terribly interested in what "copyright law" says about the subject because we all know US copyright law is fucked up.)

You mean like computer game publishers can dictate the hardware and system you use by saying that you will have buy an xbox 360 to play Halo? Or you can wait another 2 years to play it on PC, as long as you use a machine with Windows Vista on it.

Not an analoguous issue. Music on CDs and making it into MP3 or whatever other file format is simply encoding sound and replaying it. That's a whole different ball game from operating systems which have a lot more far more complex issues that are tied to the hardware they operate on and what you can do with that. Games are further limited by what the operating system they were developed on is capable of. The comparison to music files is not valid in this sense, because we are only talking about how the data (sound) is encoded, not about all of the other mechanisms required for playback on which platforms.

DRM locks the data, which itself is NOT dependent on a particular platform. Get your fucking issues straight, people.

Edi

[Dominus Atheos]

You don't have any guaranteed rights by Fair Use provisions to install Mac OS X on your home-built PC. You do have a right to back up music that you buy. That is the legitimate end which DRM impedes in the music industry. There is no "legitimate end" as far as operating systems are concerned beyond what the creator of that OS says is legitimate.

So, if the music industry were to release music under a license forbidding people to play it via certain means, that would be totally kosher with you? Because I don't see why Apple should get to dictate to me what hardware I can run their software on.

(And I'm not terribly interested in what "copyright law" says about the subject because we all know US copyright law is fucked up.)

You mean like computer game publishers can dictate the hardware and system you use by saying that you will have buy an xbox 360 to play Halo? Or you can wait another 2 years to play it on PC, as long as you use a machine with Windows Vista on it.

What the fuck are you blathering on about? It's not illegal to play halo on an XBox or XP, if you can get it to run, fucktard. It is illegal to break iTunes DRM, or install OSX on a custom built computer.

[General Zod]

What the fuck are you blathering on about? It's not illegal to play halo on an XBox or XP, if you can get it to run, fucktard. It is illegal to break iTunes DRM, or install OSX on a custom built computer.

Since it's perfectly legal to install Windows on custom built machines, as well as Linux and virtually every other operating system out there, it's questionable as to how legal it is for Apple to restrict its use to Apple specific computers. It made some sense when you couldn't install the Mac OS onto other machines due to hardware/software incompatability, but these days even that justification is shaky.

[Dominus Atheos]

What the fuck are you blathering on about? It's not illegal to play halo on an XBox or XP, if you can get it to run, fucktard. It is illegal to break iTunes DRM, or install OSX on a custom built computer.

Since it's perfectly legal to install Windows on custom built machines, as well as Linux and virtually every other operating system out there, it's questionable as to how legal it is for Apple to restrict its use to Apple specific computers. It made some sense when you couldn't install the Mac OS onto other machines due to hardware/software incompatability, but these days even that justification is shaky.

I think it's breach of contract or something. Remember, you aren't buying OSX, you're buying a license to use OSX, and must obey the terms of the license.