Shebanation

A couple of months ago, Steve Jobs posted his open letter on DRM to the web and I posted Jobs on DRM: The Elephant in the Room in response. It got me my very first set of Apple fanboy comments, which was exciting. Today, of course, Apple and EMI announced that they would start selling DRM-free tracks at a 30% markup. I want to congratulate Apple and EMI for taking this step. As someone who has purchased a fair amount of music through the iTunes Store, I’m happy to get the DRM-free tracks and the higher resolution, and I will undoubtedly be upgrading my existing purchases to the new format.

Going back and rereading my post, I’m really glad I focused on the video issue. Otherwise I too might have gotten hit with the dreaded John Gruber “Jackass of the Week” title. I thought it worth noting that Jobs did in fact address the video DRM issue at the announcement, and his point of view won’t please the anti-DRM forces in the world. Here’s one choice quote from Jobs:

Video is pretty different from music right now because the video industry does not distribute 90 percent of their content DRM free. Never has. So I think they are in a pretty different situation, and I wouldn’t hold it to a parallel at all.

He is basically saying that video DRM is OK because people are used to from DVDs. Not a very compelling argument, as it completely ignores all the questions about fair use.

Finally for the conspiracy theorists out there, could the timing of the Apple/EMI announcement be related to this news that came out the same day and got buried? (Tip of the hat to Paul for sending me the link…)

Posted by at 6:57 PM | Permalink

Today Steve Jobs posted a blog-style message on the Apple website about iTunes and DRM. It was a highly polished, well written piece. Many people have written about it: some have speculated about whether or not Jobs has enough clout to make it happen; others have pointed out that this is really a way for Apple to position itself against European arguments against iTunes/iPod lock-in; others have questioned how sincere Jobs really is in asking the labels to change without really making any changes on its own unilaterally. Personally, I think all these people have good points, but despite all that I think the statement was a good move for Apple and the industry. I hope Jobs continues to discus things in the open instead of retreating back into the Infinite Loop bunker.

That said, I find it interesting that no one is pointing out what Jobs didn’t say anything about: DRM and video. Last time I checked, Apple also sold TV shows, music videos, and films on iTunes Music Store, and they are all protected by FairPlay DRM. Why didn’t Jobs make the same courageous stand against DRM on video? Unfortunately, the answer isn’t very pretty: Apple doesn’t have anywhere near the same clout in the movie and TV business that it has in music, and has only signed film deals with two of the major studios as a result. Taking a stand against DRM for movies would anger the same people he is trying to make deals with. So much for courageous principles - the people who think his message was mostly about positioning in Europe are spot on.

[Update 2-6-2007] I just realized that I kind of cribbed the title from my post from Tim Bray, who posted an article that used it as a subhead only two weeks ago. Credit where credit is due... I've also added a digg link as an experiment, and corrected a few typos.

Posted by at 4:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)