Steve Jobs says, "Ditch DRM"

[unixronin]

As c|net reports, Steve Jobs has posted an open letter on apple.com in which he calls on record companies to abandon DRM.

Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it?  The simplest answer is because DRMs haven't worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy.  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 CD¹, so all the music distributed on CDs can be easily uploaded to the Internet, then (illegally) downloaded and played on any computer or player.

[1]  Well, actually, Sony tried it.  I think we all remember how well that worked out for Sony.

Comments

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

Sony's attempt was also a failure in that the regular music files themselves were not DRMed at all. So it failed on all fronts.

This made the blogsphere and the front page of the Wall Street Journal. Apple is almost large enough as a customer that the music companies must take notice. This is a good day.