Steve talks about DRM, and he’s sooooooo right:
[...] 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.
Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy. 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.
In 2006, under 2 billion DRM-protected songs were sold worldwide by online stores, while over 20 billion songs were sold completely DRM-free and unprotected on CDs by the music companies themselves. The music companies sell the vast majority of their music DRM-free, and show no signs of changing this behavior, since the overwhelming majority of their revenues depend on selling CDs which must play in CD players that support no DRM system.
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. [...]
— http://www.apple.com/de/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/
Thanks, Steve. Hope your words will be heard! Im Übrigen lassen diese Worte auch hoffen, daß Apple kein großer Unterstützer von Trusted Computing ist und sein wird.
In dem Zusammenhang sei auch nochmal auf das – ebenfalls 100%ig zutreffende Zitat - aus einem Jobs-Interview im Rolling Stone aus dem Jahre 2003 erwähnt:
None of this technology that you’re talking about’s gonna work. We have Ph.D.’s here, that know the stuff cold, and we don’t believe it’s possible to protect digital content.
Hausaufgabe für geneigte Musikmanager: den letzten Satz auswendig lernen. Er ist einfach wahr.
#1 von Benjamin Schneider unter 8. Februar 2007
Naaaa klaaaar würde Apple soooofort auf DRM-freie Musik setzen, wenn die bösen bösen Labels das nur erlauben würden…
So sieht dieses “Reality-Distortion-Field” also aus :-)
#2 von Die Stimme der freien Welt unter 8. Februar 2007
Der iPod verkauft sich nicht aufgrund des DRM, sondern trotz des DRM. Apple hat da wohl am wenigstens zu fürchten.