Thinking Different about DRM
Today Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs wrote a solid piece on the state of digital rights management (DRM) and its use at Apple Inc.
Jobs talks about the importance of keeping any DRM scheme in the hands of as few people as possible stating,
“The most serious problem is that licensing a DRM involves disclosing some of its secrets to many people in many companies, and history tells us that inevitably these secrets will leak. The Internet has made such leaks far more damaging, since a single leak can be spread worldwide in less than a minute.”
Following this logic, opening up Apple Inc’s DRM, known as FairPlay would put ‘ too many cooks in the secret kitchen ‘. If a breech was to take place, patching it to tens of millions of devices would be a nightmare.
The structure of the deal with the “big four” music companies: Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI states that Apple must patch any vulnerabilities to the DRM in a given time, and if that does not happen, they might not be able to distribute their music. With over a billion songs sold on the iTunes Music Store, I would not see Apple wanting to open themselves to the liability of licensing FairPlay.
The article seems like a classic defense of the FairPlay DRM model that Apple currently employs, until Jobs laid out the ultimate alternative for the consumer – killing DRM.
Jobs illustrates an interesting point,
“Though the big four music companies require that all their music sold online be protected with DRMs, these same music companies continue to sell billions of CDs a year which contain completely unprotected music. That’s right! No DRM system was ever developed for the CD, so all the music distributed on CDs can be easily uploaded to the Internet, then (illegally) downloaded and played on any computer or player.”
I for one would love a world with no DRM. Let me obtain my digital content however I see fit and use it on any other device I desire. I applaud Apple Inc. and Steve Jobs for laying their position on the table with regards to DRM – let’s just hope the real decision makers are listening.