“Digital rights management (DRM) is an out-and-out disaster both as a concept and as an always changing technology,” John C. Dvorak writes for MarketWatch.

“Most technologists have always believed this and apparently now Steve Jobs is saying it publicly,” Dvorak writes. “He is begging the music industry to give up on all the DRM initiatives while subtly predicting they may spell its doom. He is dead right.”

Dvorak writes, “Jobs is no idiot and after already proving that selling music online is a money-maker you’d think the big labels would pay some attention to him when he tells them to get off this DRM nonsense.”

“Of course they will pay no attention whatsoever,” Dvorak writes.

Dvorak writes, “I would like to finish with the marketing observation that the record industry hates. During the heyday of Napster and open free music sharing and trading, when million of people swapped songs, the CD business was booming. Once Napster was shut down, and along with it the social network of music discovery, sales began to plummet. They are still falling.”

Dvorak writes, “Apparently these people are clueless about their own industry and how it works.”

Full article here.
Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling. Forty years of darkness. Earthquakes, volcanoes…The dead rising from the grave. Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria. Dvorak making sense. Sheesh, what’s next?

Related article:
Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ posts rare open letter: ‘Thoughts on Music’ – calls for DRM-free music – February 06, 2007