RSSApple's Steve Jobs Calls for End of DRM
By Nate Mook | Published February 6, 2007, 4:54 PM
Apple CEO Steve Jobs has made a surprise call for the end of digital rights management technology, which is designed to stop copyrighted music from being shared illicitly. Jobs says Apple would sell only DRM-free music on iTunes if it could.
The revelation came in an open letter published on Apple's Web site, which largely responds to concerns over DRM that have come from European countries such as Norway and France. Jobs offers three possible outcomes for the future, but highlights the abandonment of DRM by record companies as the best possible solution for consumers.
Because Apple leads the digital music market by a huge margin in both song downloads and hardware players with the iPod, legislators have told the company it needs to make iTunes compatible with competitors. Norway went so far as to declare the iPod illegal last month, as it locks users into buying music only from iTunes.
Jobs explains in the letter that Apple has determined it cannot open up its FairPlay DRM technology to others, because doing so would open the door for hackers. When negotiating terms with record labels, Jobs says, Apple was forced to stipulate that FairPlay would remain secure or the labels could pull their music from iTunes immediately.
The FairPlay DRM has been cracked in the past, but Apple has been quick to issue updates that close any loophole. "There is no theory of protecting content other than keeping secrets. In other words, even if one uses the most sophisticated cryptographic locks to protect the actual music, one must still “hide” the keys which unlock the music on the user’s computer or portable music player. No one has ever implemented a DRM system that does not depend on such secrets for its operation," Jobs writes.
If Apple were to open FairPlay to third party manufacturers and music stores, controlling those secrets would be impossible, he adds. Referring to the Zune, Jobs adds, "Perhaps this same conclusion contributed to Microsoft’s recent decision to switch their emphasis from an “open” model of licensing their DRM to others to a “closed” model of offering a proprietary music store, proprietary jukebox software and proprietary players."
Another solution moving forward is to continue on the same path, where companies sell music designed for specific players and protected by closed DRM systems. Microsoft, Sony and Apple all do this Jobs notes. He downplays "lock-in" concerns by explaining that only 22 songs are purchased from iTunes for every iPod sold, which indicates that the vast majority of iPods are filled with non-DRM music.
But the most controversial idea for the future is one Jobs says would create the best environment for both the marketplace and consumers alike: "abolish DRMs entirely."
"Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat," Jobs writes. "If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store."
He explains that most music is still sold on CDs, which have no built-in DRM technologies and can be freely copied and shared over the Internet. "So if the music companies are selling over 90 percent of their music DRM-free, what benefits do they get from selling the remaining small percentage of their music encumbered with a DRM system? There appear to be none."
Jobs concludes his letter with a swipe at European regulators, noting that two and a half of the big four music labels are located in Europe, and says, "those unhappy with the current situation should redirect their energies towards persuading the music companies to sell their music DRM-free...Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace. Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly."
Gun control doesn't work--criminals WILL FIND GUNS. Immigration reform using any compromise other than all or nothing policy doesn't work--not saying I suggest this, but only saying that the only way to solve the problem is to do what is nearly impossible to do. Government oversight regarding 'illegal' monopolies hasn't ever worked either. Sofware that required those hardware dongles were a complete disaster.
But DRM is going to work, no problem!
Seriously, who invented this stuff? Those who fail to learn from other's mistakes are likely to repeat them, so here we go.
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|Keep dreaming, guys... DRM is the future. What Jobs forgot to mention, is that 3 years ago DRM sales were 2% of all music sales, 2 years ago it was 4%, and today it's 10%. Clearly you can see why ANY intel prop owner would want to protect his investment with DRM so eventually..at some point in the future..the majority of sales will be DRMed...
As for "sharing the secrets" - it's bullsh*t. To give customers choice you can allow only huge competitors access to "the secrets" and they'll have the same insentive as you do to keep it well protected.
In the future you will have DRM even for the most liberal music. They'll just let you install on 20 machines instead of 1 (so you can share it with friends as promo or somesuch, like google invites). They're still not gonna LET GO OF CONTROL. Especially when DRM becomes an integral part of all major OSs thanks to TPM (encryption chips).
It's all a matter of price anyway. Everyone here would buy all the music in the world DRM'ed if it was 5c a song... Don't lie now..
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|You're on drugs. Every single DRM scheme ever invented has been compromised. The time between deployment and compromise is shortening with each attempt. What does that say? It says people are tired of being handcuffed.
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|Umm...yeah, yeah, well..I'm still happy with eMusic.com so, I'll skip the iCrapod and anything related with "Manzanas" hahahahahaha!
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|"Norway went so far as to declare the iPod illegal last month, as it locks users into buying music only from iTunes."
my ipod is full of music NOT purchased from Itunes... whats wrong with norway?
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|I *think* (you'll probably tell me I'm wrong) that Norway is actually looking at it the other way round:
You have to have an iPod to store the iTunes songs on an mp3 player.
Therefore they're getting an iPod out of you because there isn't another option (other than to not use iTunes).
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|DRM was always a waste of time. And the big four should know better. I mean look, a typical music CD is what, $14? And how much the artist is getting out of that? 10 cents? Yeah somethin’ like that, right! I hate those greedy majors. All Hail Steve! All Hail Steve!!
Oh! And remember this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...copy_protection_scandal
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|Give'em the smack down Steve. Provide a DRM free platform, and lower the price of music on your site ~75% bringing it back to fair market value (IMHO) and I'll use your service.
Thanks.
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|That open letter on Apple's website makes it clear as day. To move forward in the industry the "big 4" need to eliminate DRM.
GO JOBS! GO! (Gotta love the Apple)
+100 respect points!
Where are you Gates?
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|He's saying it now because he's already got everyone on his side.
If he'd said this before iTunes was popular iTunes wouldn't have the music it has on it now because the big companies would have run away.
He's saying it now because the companies won't run away because it's the biggest out there thus they would lose quite a lot of revenue.
So the reason behind him saying this now is to get more popularity for his brand and earn him more money.
It's yet another stunt.
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|As long as the Big Four music labels and the Digital Rights Mafia insist on infecting their products with DRM, people aren’t going to buy it. People who are willing to go to a little effort will support sites like AllOfMP3.com (which I highly recommend), which sells legal music without DRM. The rest will simply share it online through applications like ShareAza (which is arguably the best Windows file-sharing program).
Even Steve Jobs has finally realized what many of us knew back when he was pushing it in 2003 — that DRM is a colossal waste of time and money. When the Digital Rights Mafia gives up on their jihad against their customers, maybe they’ll realize it, too. Then we’ll all win.
Don’t hold your breath.
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|JOBS LEADS THE WAY AGAIN!
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|As mentioned below, neither Apple nor any other vendor of players controls DRM, the owners of the content do.
So while it may be a grand sound bite, listening to Gates or Jobs means little.
But while we are at it, I wonder what the Pope, Bono, Britney and Madonna think of it? ROFLMAO
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|There's software to convert Apple media to standard mp3's. So what's the point?
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|+10 respectability points for Apple Coorporation!
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|Bruised and bloodied from a severe beating with a clue stick the old media companies are beginning to understand. IF IT CAN BE PLAYED, IT CAN BE COPIED!
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|to anyone and and everyone who considers buying anything off itunes:
its called LIMEWIRE people!!! why would u ever EVER pay for a song when u can get it free(legally) and put it in any format u want. i have like 1000 songs on my ipod and havnt even been to the tinues store.
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|legally eh? clearly you are an idiot, as downloading from there is strictly illegal if you do not own the media of the same sound quality. And people like you are the reason there is DRM to begin with. Artists deserve money for their hard work. although how much of that expensive price actually goes to artists is arguable....
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|Not enough coffee this morning? Your brain doesn't seem to be functioning properly.
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|Last i heard.. Limewire was still a grey area and if you share files, you don't have the right to share, it's sill a copyright violation. Not to mention, is this the same Limewire that full of spyware?
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|No thanks to malware city.
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|ha ha ha
you p2p noob
i hope you get sued using limewire
use some real stuff like private torrent sites or rapidshare, start saving your money to pay the riaa lawsuit :P
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|Good on ya Jobs, for making the point. Blaming Apple for the DRM requirements of the studios is a bit like blaming the policeman for enforcing an unjust law: they're both just doing as they're told. You can argue Apple has the market power to change that, but the fact is they don't: as the article stated, 90% of music is sold on CD.
He's got to bend to their rules - but at least he's letting everyone know who's the culprit. With any luck the EU might see who the real criminals are - I doubt anything will happen in the US. :/
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|If Jobs really wanted interoperability he'd have his boys uncripple iTunes so one could rip to MP3 or some other codecs. It's not the DRM that locks people in, it's the fact that once you rip your CD's in iTunes you lock yourself into AAC which is for the most part only supported by iTunes and iPod devices. Yes I know Nero and a couple of other apps support AAC but for the most part the reality of AAC is iTunes and the iPod.
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|iTunes can rip to mp3.
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|Missed the configuration page, did we?
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|My experience with iTunes comes from dealing with my nieces two computers and both of them have a hard drive full of AAC and had to re-rip everything when they dumped thier iPods for Sansa players. I haven't had iTunes installed on my PC's since I have no need for it and it's fairly invasive with it's install, quicktime and startup programs.
In all honesty I certainly did not see a configuration menu which allowed for MP3 rips, nor did I see an option for WMA to MP3 ingestion. Appears to only allow for WMA to AAC. So, where is this configuration screen? I could see where you can select different flavors of AAC but I did not see MP3 as an option for ripping or transcoding.
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|Open source providers distribute FREE MP-4 AAC plugins for both Windows Media Player 9-10 and WinAmp. Look around and you will see plugins for FLAC, OGG Vorbis. and Monkeys Audio APE.
There are SHN and REAL audio plugins for WinAmp too...
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|I haven't use iTunes for a very long time, last I checked, there is no such option. Unless they update its option lately.
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|Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Importing -> "Import Using" - MP3 Encoder...
It's been there ever since I've been using iTunes (for years).
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|You obviously didn't read the whole statement by Jobs. Allowing you to rip to MP3 from iTunes would be circumventing the licensing requirement imposed by the record companies. MS does the SAME THING with Zune. They ALL do (if they're legal). They HAVE to in order to comply with RIAA and the "big four" or else they lose their rights to sell their songs under license.
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|You can't rip from the online store, you can rip from CD and other local media only. That's the ONLY legal allowance (unless the DMCA is skewed yet again)
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|yup Itune can,
Jay
http://jayed.us/
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|Let the market decided what they want, disable the DRM for 30 days, then enable it for another 30 days. Hell if you want make it so every 100 songs from one person, enables 100 DRM-FREE songs, who wouldn't take advantage of that deal :-)
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|Now if someone would do the same thing to CableLabs here in the US.
Is it me or is tying the cablecard OCUR device strictly to Windows Vista only "anticompetitive" and "stifling innovation"? Of course it is. It's the exact same thing only for digital cable TV tuners in computers.
In order to have digital cable (both analog/SD and HD channels)on a computer you have to have Vista and their stupid OCUR/DRM requirements.
Why isn't anyone making that point known to the FTC?
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|maybe cause its not cost-effective to develop that technology for the minority of the population? Alot of software companies dont make software for the mac. sshould they be sent to court over it? you are free to choose platforms, but so are developers and hardware makers.
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|Let the record labels pull their music, then watch them cry because of the lost sales. I would say Apple has an upper hand, but Steve is to chicken sh** to call them on it. Get a back bone Steve.
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|He said it himself - 90% of music sales are on CD, and are DRM-free. Assuming the other 10% is solely iTMS (and it's not), the music companies are only losing 10% of their sales. No big loss - and the customers will just go buy the CD if they can't find what they want on the store.
As he said, his hands are tied.
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|It does make sense. I mean most of the music I have is from my cd collection. I have bought maybe 2 or 3 cd's worth of music from itunes. It is easy convenient etc. It does suck when you lose the music and have no backup and lets not forget you can't or are not out right able to copy music from your ipod back to the computer. yes third party programs do allow you to do this now.
Point is every time itunes drm is hacked and is put out it he media no doubt they are in hot water until a fix is put out.
But yes it is very odd, that the majority of all music is put out there with no drm via cd's. So why does it have to be sold over music stores with it? That by itself is a hinderance. If DRM went away and everything was compatible with everything it would be a very different market indeed.
I have no idea what the industry is afraid of by going anti drm. It would keep costs down. hackers board and profit margins much higher. Would there be more piracy? NO not really if the only method of buying music was drm'd and it went away maybe. However the MAJORITY of all music sold has no drm on it, that is cd's. So what is the problem once again? Who knows.
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|Gates said it last month, Jobs this month; neither like it; even Wal-Mart told the studios that downloading is happening or they're gone from their stores. Why not?
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|im all for the end of DRM.
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|Steve Jobs is such a hypocrite. Apple has a large enough percentage of Internet music sales, that he could probably go to the RIAA and give them the choice of no DRM or no iTunes Store, reminding them that the consumer will just start downloading illegally again if there is no good alternative.
If Jobs even *allows* people to put music for sale on iTunes without DRM (independent artists and labels), then I might believe he is just scared of the record companies, but as it is, *all* purchasable music on iTunes has DRM.
And of course Apple uses DRM in other ways too, such as in their own operating system. Why can't you install Mac OSX on any x86 computer? DRM.
Apple is not anti-DRM, regardless of what Jobs says.
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|"Why can't you install Mac OSX on any x86 computer? DRM."
Get a grip. That's got nothing to do with DRM. :P
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|moved
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|WRONG numbskull!
Load Intel's EFI BIOS and tweak a few routines and it loads.
But doesn't ignorance seem blissful! How's life in peaceful valley?
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|"Why can't you install Mac OSX on any x86 computer? DRM."
Um... no.
The correct answer is "drivers."
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|So what you are saying basically is that you can hack it to make it work. How is this any different from crackable DRM. Just because smart enough people *can* install OSX on an arbitrary computer does not mean Apple is not trying to prevent it from happening. By the same logic, crackable DRM is not really DRM, because people can bypass it.
By the way, thanks for the childish insult at the beginning of your post. It really encouraged me to take the rest seriously.
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|"as it locks users into buying music only from iTunes."
It's the other way round that's more worrying.
You have to have an iPod to store the songs on (before one of you smart-arses says you can store them on a hard drive, I mean as a portable listening source).
You can quite happily purchase music on CD.
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|All pretty basic stuff that the average (computer geek) Joe has been saying for the last few years. Btw I'm no Apple fanboy.
But it is music to my ears (sorry) to hear Jobs taking this position. Now I'm looking for him to try an put a bit of pressure on the labels.
So jobs says this while Microsoft willing pay the labels a percentage of the Zune hardware sales. How about copying Apple on this move MS.
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|you can "say" whatever you want when you're on top.
when you're down in the trenches you have to deal with the devil.
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|If your referring to Microsoft giving a cut of HW sales as delaing with the devil then let me ask you this.
Would you go to the devil and willingly give him your soul, or a percentage of it?
If you answer anything other than NO then you are very much in the minority (& in need of mental help call 0800-CRAZY).
Microsoft willingly went to the labels and offered them the cut of HW. WHY? (yea to get at apple etc) but WHY? All they have done it open a massive can of worms that will be tough to close if the lables get stubborn.
I do want to say that it's not as if I believe Jobs 100% when he says this. But the very fact that he says it in public shows that he supports the idea of DRM free music.
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|Which seems to me to be exactly their thoughts on the matter.
What could they have done about it prior to being the market leader? Nothing.
Now there's actually some hope that they might have enough influence to change things.
Funny how even when someone goes about things the right way, they get slammed for it.
Why didn't they do this from the beginning? Uh...who'd have listened?
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|"only 22 songs are purchased from iTunes for every iPod sold, which indicates that the vast majority of iPods are filled with non-DRM music."
This says it all, if they were to open it up to non-DRM sold songs, you'd see that number increase significantly. People are afraid they will be locked out of their own music so they are finding ways of getting it for free. I'd rather buy the CD than buy a crippled digital version.
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|Pffft.
Jobs has a stranglehold on the digital music empire with the ipod. now he wants to turn around and claim it's all the industry's fault so he can give it away?
whatever prometheus, whatever.
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|iTunes would have never been able to license the music they have if they'd fought DRM from the beginning.
I might be giving Jobs too much credit here, but if they'd planned this from the beginning, they couldn't have planned it much better.
What better position could they be in to start trying to change the scene? They absolutely dominate US legal downloadable music sales.
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|You are so right. It's about time one of the big guys opened up there mouthes about the current situation with the Music In America, and abroad.
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|Good one, Steve!
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