Steve Jobs (or one of his helpful assistants) posted an open letter to the music industry to abolish digital rights management. Could this be one of the turning points for the death of DRM?
I think Jobs/Apple do believe what they say in the letter. In my opinon, Apple has received some unfair criticism for their FairPlay DRM. There was no way the iTunes store would have ever got off the ground without it. Although it was an Apple invention, it was mandated by the big record labels. The iTunes store was originally designed to sell iPods and not make money itself. If that is still Apple’s belief, an end to DRM shouldn’t hurt sales of iPods one bit.
I believe Apple has another reason they have taken the anti-DRM stand. The case in Norway is not huge yet but could loom as a potential problem in the long term. What better way to address these concerns than to throw out the entire DRM model altogether.
Jobs didn’t mention video in his letter. That’s unfortunate because he is in the very unique position of controlling both the most popular digital download site and the movie studio that has created the highest grossing DVD releases of all time. Take it one more step and offer up Pixar content unencumbered by DRM. Those of us with children thank you in advance.
No matter what the motivation, it is refreshing to see someone like Jobs say what we all know - DRM does nothing to combat piracy and punishes paying customers. It reduces our enjoyment of digital media and constrains our use.
My dream iTunes feature - remove DRM from purchased files once and for all.
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