Digital Rights Managements

Even I have to admit Steve Jobs’ DRM-bashing letter is pretty good:

The third alternative is to 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. 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. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.

But what’s up with DRMs?

Via Tim Lee.

Addendum: Lots of people want to sell their music DRM-free at the iTunes store.

2 Responses

  1. […] has excellent points about the issue including some light-promises. As I expected, Prof. Lessig, Mike Linksvayer, Sneakmove, other hackers, and Mr. Boing Boing Doctorow all made comments on Steve Jobs great […]

  2. […] in general) is not a winning strategy. There is no deterministic path for other media to follow music away from DRM, and indeed there is a threat that a faux-standard as proposed will mean that DRM […]

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