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Steve Jobs 'Thoughts on Music'
- Thread starter spicyapple
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Sorry, by "buy-once-copy-freely" I thought you meant it was ok to copy for friends after buying it.
Sure, selling music without DRM doesn't stop piracy, but neither does selling music with DRM... and that is the point. DRM doesn't do anything except piss paying customers off.
Of course, this is a very important point. Really, Apple's DRM does not get in the way at all, but only because there is the out of burning the track to CD, which will let you do whatever you want with the track - turn it into a ringtone, use it in iMovie, whatever.
If DRM does not get in the way for legitimate use, I personally have no problem with it, and Apple's implementation is pretty good in that respect.
But even without the ability to burn to disc (such as with iTS TV shows for example), I still find the DRM to be less restrictive than say a DVD. Being an Australian living in Europe, I find that I have DVDs from zones 1, 2, and 4. For me, at least when I buy a show on iTS, I know that I'll be able to play it wherever I am in the world, provided that I have access to a computer with iTunes.
On the other hand, it's next to impossible to imagine an open DRM solution that gets out of the way as much as FairPlay. This includes even Fairplay itself, if it were to be licensed to multiple partners. Jobs is 100% correct when he says that if operability is the key, the only reasonable solution is to use a non-DRMed format.
I think I can speak authoritively on this subject. I do DRM for a living. Infact, right now I'm supposed to be putting the finishing touches on our latest VM, so that all the mean nasty pirates have a harder time cracking our reader software. Meh.
Our software is licensable, and I can promise you that the heartache that it causes, trying to integrate your DRM with 100 different clients is substantial. It chews up about 100 full time programmers and testers here. I'm willing to bet that Apple doesn't have anywhere near that many people doing Fairplay, because they don't have to do all the interoperability crap that we do as a result of licensing.
Let me give an example. One of our partners produces a STB that is going to use our technology to protect TV content, because the TV operator has chosen our solution. But the partner can't be bothered doing updates on their STB. The client then comes to us and says "Hey, your system has been cracked - fix it!". We say, sure, no problem, we've already prepared the next version. It just has to be integrated with the STB. But the STB manufacturer doesn't want to play ball to do the integration. Says he's busy on other projects, and doesn't have the resources to do an integration. We end up having to pay him to do his own work, or worse, reverse his code, and do the integration ourselves!
This is not a hypothetical, we see exactly this scenario at least 3 or 4 times a year. And we are nowhere near as big as Apple.
So, Jobs is right - it's Fairplay or the highway... Licensing is just a crap solution that is commercially unworkable.
Not to flog a dead horse, but I believe that the single carrier iPhone is exactly the same as the DRM'd iPod/iTunes combo. But not necessarily in a bad way. iPod/iTunes needed the blessing of the big 4 to become successful, and so in its early days needed to play along with them and play their DRM games. But now SJ is attempting to show the big 4 that DRM is useless, and music should be distributed the way apple has wanted to all along - i.e. DRM free.
Likewise, the iPhone needs the blessing of the mobile industry to become successful. And in the states, that means being locked to a carrier. I have a feeling that SJ's feelings on this are exactly the same as DRM. It is a necessary evil to get the product out there, and sometime in the future once it is popular, he will fight to make it the way we want it to be.
So no, he is not having it both ways.
Likewise, the iPhone needs the blessing of the mobile industry to become successful. And in the states, that means being locked to a carrier. I have a feeling that SJ's feelings on this are exactly the same as DRM. It is a necessary evil to get the product out there, and sometime in the future once it is popular, he will fight to make it the way we want it to be.
So no, he is not having it both ways.
DRM *does* get in the way. Several people have answered this question and they ALL say DRM hinders them - I suggest you go back and read the answers ( yes, there's a lot of pages 
).
Burn -> rip is inconvenient and time consuming. If I have to do this - then immediately DRM is hindering the way I listen to music.
).Burn -> rip is inconvenient and time consuming. If I have to do this - then immediately DRM is hindering the way I listen to music.
Really, it doesn't. Neither my wife nor myself are currently using phones that were even on sale in the US, let alone locked to a US carrier (I'm using a V635, she's using a RIZR. Yes. With an "I".)
The "All US mobile phone companies only want equipment they've personally approved on their networks" thing is a myth based upon the behaviour of the IS-95/CDMA2000 operators. Apple certainly doesn't have to bust that myth by, erm, locking their phone to a specific carrier, especially if (as the rumours and the component breakdowns suggest) they don't want the device subsidized.
Thanks for the post
It's great hearing stuff like that directly from someone in the trenches!
There is no evidence of that at all.
Let's say there is a song that I want to buy and download to my Creative player. The song is available on iTMS and allofmp3.com. I have three choices:
1. Download from iTMS, go through all of the **** like burning on a CD, reimporting with quality loss. That's the legal way.
2. Download from iTMS, then download another cheap copy from allofmp3.com without DRM. A more expensive, but clearly ethical way.
3. Download a cheap copy from allofmp3.com without DRM. Cheap, no DRM, not ethical.
As you can see, (1) is cumbersome. (2) is cumbersome and more expensive. (3) gives me the best product for the best price and is clearly unethical. Many people will do (3) because they don't want to pay more for being honest _and_ be punished for it by getting a less useful product. Without DRM, many of those _would_ pay the higher price to be honest.
The dishonest people would go the cheap route anyway, with or without DRM. And there will be some people who would stay honest without DRM because they would think it is unfair to take advantage of being trusted and making copies, where the same people wouldn't mind breaking the DRM in some way. Treat someone like an honest person, and they'll act honestly. Treat them as a thief, and they act as a thief.
You raise some interesting ideas. I only use iPods with my Macs, so my perspective is probably a bit skewed. You admit that many people go with item 3, which you state as being unethical. Imagine what would happen if DRM was removed from high quality tracks and those same people had access to these files! Lack of ethics does not stop just because the quality of the product being stolen is higher. I still maintain that some sort of process needs to be in place to prevent unauthorized duplication and distribution. Again, Steve's message did not suggest a DRM replacement, it mentioned "DRM-free" tracks.
I think you can extrapolate results, but you are right, I am sharing an oppinion and not the results of a tested theory. However, when video tapes first came out there was no copy protection on them. People were renting and then copying videos freely. Some were even repackaging them and either selling or renting their copies. This is why the video industry had to come up with a copy protection plan. Granted, it can be broken. Any lock can be broken (but I still want one on my front door). But copy protection/DRM does keep those folks who might just be a little ethically challenged from breaking the law.
Do I think you have a right to play a track that you download from iTS on any device? Well, not if that right allows you and millions of others to freely copy and distribute copyrighted material. But in general, yes. This is an issue in HOW the DRM is constructed, not whether there is DRM. And that does fall into the Apple basket.
I signed up via an offer on the Guardian's site and got 40 free. I now get 40 tracks each month for the princely sum of £6.39! I've got some really great stuff from them.
You miss the very important point about the current situation: EVERYTHING that's on iTunes or any legal online store can be obtained illegally. If I buy a song and decide to upload it to the net, then I'm not really making it easier for anyone to pirate that song because it's probably already there.
DRM does not stop piracy. Ever. Ever ever ever ever ever. It never has, never will.
Exactly - DRM is essentially useless.
The only way to stop piracy is to crack down on P2P sites and start persecuting these criminals.
I wish he'd address movies as well. I wanted to get Aristocats for my daughter (which is not available right now in stores from Disney) and was prepared to buy it on iTunes and then I realized that I had no way to get it on DVD to play downstairs or on the road.
So, the only way for me to get Aristocats is to buy it off of Ebay at a premium. Once again, a legitimate paying consumer is stymied by DRM.
So, the only way for me to get Aristocats is to buy it off of Ebay at a premium. Once again, a legitimate paying consumer is stymied by DRM.
All in good time. Right now the music industry NEEDS iTunes. The film industry doesn't, so writing an open letter like he did wouldn't have anywhere near as much impact.
I don't know whether DRM stops piracy or not. I can certainly imagine it does not. But it might slow it down some. And an implication that DRM should be abolished because it does not stop piracy seems akin to the idea that we should eliminate police officers because there is still crime.
During the Macworld keynote Steve mentioned that Apple sells 5 million songs a day in the iTS. Five million songs every day. That is, as he also said, 58 songs every second. If the people buying those songs had an easy way to get their music for free, do you really think that they would just stop by the iTunes store because they like Apple? Well, maybe some would. But I am sure that 4,999,992 of them would be downloading the free stuff, and Apple's financials would look differently.
I am just not convinced that the point is whether DRM will stop piracy or not.
Just make sure you put them in the same cell that's reserved for the CEOs of RIAA, and the major labels.
So you think p2p clients are harder to use than iTunes????
They're not. People buy from iTunes because it's slightly more convenient, USD$0.99 isn't much for 1 song and I think there's a lot of people out there who do want to support their favourite artist.
iTunes has done well because its DRM is very light, not in spite of that fact. There's 100s of online video and music stores that have failed because they have too much DRM. If anything DRM hurts sales, not increases them.