Are you kidding?
I am sure that, with more than 300 replies, there are some very considered responses as well as the usual "Way to go"! type replies. But it is amazing to me that Steve Jobs would take a such a position.
Everyone reading this knows Steve is a visionary and that, as such, he has gained the respect, admiration and perhaps fear from fans, friends and foes. But a DRM-free iTunes store seems irresponsible. As an artist, I would like to understand more about this thinking, because it may very well be that Steve has the ability to see into the future and understand how this might work out for all.
But it seems that allowing music to be sold without DRM will do nothing more than diminish the number of sales. This would be very similar to the idea that software should be sold without copy protection. We have all heard from the software makers about how much piracy has hurt their sales. There is even an enormous "Turn in the software pirate" campaign that ran recently (or perhaps is still running), where software makers offered rewards to people who turned in software pirates.
Look at the video tape business. Before copy protection was added to video tapes people were copying the tapes and some were even then trying to SELL or RENT the copies for profit. This was a huge burden to the video industry, which was relieved somewhat by adding copy protection.
The argument about there not being copy protection on CDs just does not make sense, either. When CDs were first manufactured it was essentially impossible for anyone to do more than make an audio cassette copy of the CD. And even the most prolific copy makers needed to do so in real time (1 minute of song takes 1 minute to record). For a 40 minute album someone would have to allocate a significant amount of time to make copies in quantities that would hurt the recording industry. It could be done, sure, but it was not so easy to do.
Not so with digital. I can make a digital copy of a CD in a few minutes, and I don't need to buy any media to distribute it. Nor do I need to invest in any method of distribution, presuming that since I have the capability to make a digital copy that I am also on the internet. I can make a copy of a song and send it to 100 (or 1,000, or 10,000) of my friends in just a few minutes, or post it to a web site for other to download.
Sony tried to implement DRM on their CDs and it blew up in their face. That does not mean that it was not the right answer, it just means that SONY had the wrong answer. Record companies recognize that music piracy erodes, not helps, sales - and that is likely one of the big reasons they felt DRM was so important in a digital environment.
I think in an ideal world everything should be freely available to everyone. That model might work, but as long as people are laboring - and believe me, it is a labor to compose, record, master and distribute music - they need to be compensated for that labor.
The few cents I receive from a digital play on Napster or the percentage of the sale I receive from an iTunes purchase is not much for an artist at my level. But at the Nickelback or Bocelli levels, these few cents amount to a significant amount of money. Much of which would not happen if I could buy once and reproduce and distribute freely.
Apple sold 21,066,000 iPods in Q1 of 2007. Granted, with a DRM-free iTunes store they would probably sell even more hardware. But the 5 million songs per day they sell in the iTunes store would probably experience a significant drop. So is Steve saying hardware is more important than the software? In this instance he makes the hardware and just resells the software. Hmmm. Maybe to him the software isnt as important. Anyone got a copy of Final Cut Studio they'd like to pass around? Let's get a few hundred unprotected copies of some Apple software in circulation and see what Steve says about DRM.
