Apple posted Steve Jobs’ open letter entitled “Thoughts on Music” on apple.com. Public statements from Jobs are very rare and in this he places the blame for the existence and continuing reliance on DRM squarely on the music companies.
Timing is right as Apple is being challenged once again to open up its DRM by consumer organizations in Europe (Finland, Norway, Denmark, France, Germany and the Netherlands). Basically the countries are asking Apple to allow the protected songs purchased from the iTunes Store to be played on other music players besides the iPod. Jobs answers this requests with stating the difficulties when trying to maintain a working Digital Rights Management.
In this very clearly built letter Jobs examine the current situation and look at three possible alternatives for the future:
1. The first alternative is to continue on the current course, with each manufacturer competing freely with their own “top to bottom†proprietary systems for selling, playing and protecting music.
2. The second alternative is for Apple to license its FairPlay DRM technology to current and future competitors with the goal of achieving interoperability between different company’s players and music stores.
3. The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely.
Protecting intellectual property is a hard task and the legistaltion is always behind. Oh, and the Apple hype has finally reached Finland as all the major Finnish news agencies have already quoted the article (like HS).
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