Debate Over DRM Gets Reignited

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs recently created ripples by publishing his thoughts on digital rights management (DRM). According to the grapevine he opposes it but his criticism of DRM has engrossed criticism of a higher rate for the CEO himself. Charlie Demerjian, for instance, called Jobs "the lowest form of hypocrite", pointing out that "the Mac, the iPod and the upcoming iPhone all are DRMed to the gills".

With circulating reports that Amazon, LimeWire, MySpace, and Yahoo Music are already working on DRM-free MP3s to compete with Apple's iTunes, more stakeholders of the industry are backing Jobs' controversial suggestion to ditch digital-rights management.

Apple’s most popular product, the iPod cannot play DRM-laden songs bought from rival online music stores and FairPlay, Apple's DRM, thwarts people from playing songs they've bought from the iTunes Music Store on other music players. In other words, Apple’s stores are tied to its players.

Torgeir Waterhouse of Forbrukerradet told the Outlaw.com website: "FairPlay is an illegal technology whose main purpose is to lock the consumers to the total package provided by Apple by blocking interoperability."

Quite contradictory to his own practice last week, Jobs sent an open letter to record labels asking them to remove DRM from their music libraries. He had to face a strong opposition from Warner Music but EMI seemed inclined towards DRM-free distributions. Sony and Universal have yet to come out with a bearing on the issue.

"DRM and interoperability are not the same thing," Edgar Bronfman Jr., chairman and CEO of Warner Music Group, said in a speech at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona on Wednesday. "We believe in interoperability. Consumers want it and should have it. We at Warner, and I hope the rest of the music and content industry, will make it as easy as possible to achieve interoperability."

Job’s wrote in his letter that he would himself prefer to sell music without any DRM protection but Bronfman said, “I don't agree that intellectual property should have no protection”.

Bronfman admitted that the protection environment isn’t ideal today and the consumer experience should not be spoiled by it. “We need to work to find perhaps a better balance than works today” he said.