I'm not what you'd call an Apple fan. I've never owned an Apple computer. I used one back in college, but only because the wait was usually shorter for a Mac than a PC, due to the overwhelming numbers of Macs in the computer labs. But sometimes Apple does comes up with great ideas, and when they do, I'll check them out. For example, I own an iPod, and I love the thing. I use it as a portable hard drive almost as much as I use it for listening to music, which comes in really handy.
Now, Steve Jobs is pushing another idea I can get behind. Ending DRM.
Apple Inc. indicated it would open its iTunes store to other portable players besides its ubiquitous iPod if the world's major record labels abandoned the anti-piracy technology that serves as the industry's security blanket.
Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive, made the case for abolishing the protections known as "Digital Rights Management," or DRM, in an open letter posted Tuesday on the Cupertino-based company's Web site. He also explained why Apple had decided against licensing its own DRM technology, known as "FairPlay," as an alternative method for making iTunes accessible to all portable players.
You can already circumvent "FairPlay" by burning your music to cd then ripping it back down to MP3 again. And that can all be done right inside iTunes, so it's not like the DRM is really securing anything anyway, it just makes it a hassle for me to get my music purchased through iTunes to play on another computer or in one of my cd players.
Will removing DRM make it easier to pirate music online? Not really. As it stands now, virtually every copy-protection scheme ever dreamed up has been cracked already anyway. It took some time to break the copy protection on DVD's, but it happened. And HD-DVD, as young as it is, has already been cracked. And Sony's new CD DRM was not only defeated with a Sharpee, but it installed what turned out to be a trojan horse on every computer the CDs were put in, which led to lawsuits and a hefty payout. Any form of DRM will likely be cracked eventually, so what's the point, really?
Of course, Jobs isn't completely altruistic on this issue. Without the DRM, iTunes could sell MP3 files to everyone with a portable music player, not just iPod users. They've already sold over two billion songs, imagine what kind of revenue that Apple (and the recording industry) could rack up if they were selling MP3 files that everyone could use.
The recording industry needs to wake up and smell the coffee. People are going to pirate music no matter what you do to try and stop it. Their best option at this point is to make it as easy as possible for people who want to purchase music legitimately and listen to it on all their devices to do so.