by Playfuls Staff |
9th February 2007
Steve Jobs’ open letter in which he speaks about Digital Rights Management has generated a lot of controversy among record companies, who have been keeping a tight grip on their intellectual property.[more]
Steve Jobs’ open letter was published on Apple’s site and it was entitled suggestively "Thoughts on Music". Apple Inc.’s boss made some considerations about the famous iTunes download service, how it evolved in time thanks to the famous iPod and what the future might bring for online distribution of music. Jobs confessed the fact that the DRM imposed to customers on iTunes was a consequence of tough negotiations with the world’s four largest record companies, which he wanted to bring on iTunes.
The alternatives Jobs enumerates in his letter are known to anyone: either Apple licenses the FairPlay DRM technology to others, or record companies start selling music in un-protected formats like MP3 and without any other DRM constraints. What has really caused a storm in the music industry is Jobs’ clear option for the second path.
"Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats," Jobs wrote. "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 mentioned in his letter that since 2001 there have been over 90 million iPods sold, and more than 2 billion songs sold from the iTunes Music Store. That means on average, each iPod user has 22 songs from iTunes.
Jobs admitted though that only 3 percent of music on the average iPod is from the Apple store. Conversely, the other 97 percent of music on that iPod is not legally downloaded; it's ripped from CDs, casually shared among friends or illegally downloaded.
In response to Apple’s boss letter, Michael Robertson, founder of music download site www.mp3.com says that he is not convinced of Jobs’ good intentions until Apple embraces an open business model.
“I want to challenge you to take actions to bolster your words to insure you are genuine and your letter wasn't simply a deflection shield to escape government scrutiny.”
Robertson came up with a list that should remove any suspicion concerning Jobs’ intentions:
1) Start selling some content in MP3 format in the iTunes store.
2) Publish the database format for iPods so other music software can be used.
3) Open the doors for iTunes software to work seamlessly with other stores.
4) Make iTunes software for Linux.
Warner Music Group chief executive Edgar Bronfman said in a conference call with analysts Thursday that Jobs’ stance is "completely without logic or merit."
"We advocate the continued ... protection of our and our artists’ intellectual property," he said.
The competing proprietary "digital rights management" (DRM) systems used by Apple, Sony, RealNetworks and Microsoft can prevent consumers from transferring tracks bought at one company’s online store directly onto another company’s MP3 player.
