Thought on Music, written by Apple CEO Steve Jobs on the topic of DRM protected music. Problem: “The problem, of course, is that there are many smart people in the world, some with a lot of time on their hands, who love to discover such secrets and publish a way for everyone to get free (and stolen) music.” Solution: (1) Continue with Apple’s FairPlay system, as it does not really lock users into iPod/iTunes because majority of stored music is still unprotected. (2) License FairPlay to competitors, but keeping cryptographical secret and updating devices can cause more problems. (3) Sell unprotected, untangled music, since we all know that DRM never worked anyway. Action: Go and hassle music publishing companies to remove DRM, and Apple will embrace it in a heartbeat. Interesting read.
Scott Yang's Playground
Faith, Technology and Randomness in Life, According to Scott
Feb 7 2007
Scott,
In my opinion, DRM isn’t a solution at all. As an example, I have a lot of mp3s however I also buy a lot of CDs as well; in fact I often download an album of mp3s simply to find out if I want the CD.
My wife knows how to download mp3s, however she doesn’t – not once; she always buys the CD. She knows how to download movies, if that took her fancy; but we always go to the cinema.
In my opinion, they need to think of a digital format an extension or supplement to the hard copy and price it accordingly without the DRM rubbish. I would buy mp3s online from Apple if they were free to use and play where I chose and not where they dictated.
Al.
Al,
Yup. DRM is not the solution. Neither did Steve Jobs think it is — or at least he is shifting the responsibility to the publishers, saying “hey don’t look at me! Ask them to remove DRM and Apple will be more than happy to do so!”
Well, my own opinion is — I don’t think Steve Jobs is unbiased. His company runs one of the top selling online music store that locks you into running cripple ware like iTunes. However I agree with him that it is not Apple who is responsible, but the major publishers are.
I don’t think DRM is going to disappear. I think the future of entertainment will polarise. On one hand you have indy bands publishing their music for free downloads, hoping that you’ll buy their CDs and go to their concerts. On the other hand, we’ll see more crippled medium from big media companies that requires specific hardware or trusted computing to play.
Scott,
The main reason I don’t think it is a solution is that there is always someone smarter than the guys implementing encryption. People who work with cryptography daily, take it as a challenge pretty much to break down other peoples work – look at what happened with the new DVD encryption recently.
The people that don’t care about the DRM are the people that were always going to use a service like iTunes and remain blissfully unaware. Meanwhile, the people that care about it are the same people I expect that know about how to use someone elses utility to breakdown/strip the encryption from an object.
I honestly think if they charged a reasonable price for distributing the digital medium that they wouldn’t need the DRM and they would actually get more business. I know for a fact that if it wasn’t crippled, I’d buy mp3s online all the time.
Al.