“A recording industry group fired back Wednesday at Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs, suggesting his company should open up its anti-piracy technology to its rivals instead of urging major record labels to strip copying restrictions from music sold online,” Alex Veiga reports for The Associated Press.
Veiga reports, “Mitch Bainwol, chairman and chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America, said the move would eliminate technology hurdles that now prevent fans from playing songs bought at Apple’s iTunes Music Store on devices other than the company’s iPod. ‘We have no doubt that a technology company as sophisticated and smart as Apple could work with the music community to make that happen,’ Bainwol said in a prepared statement.”
“In an essay posted Tuesday on the Cupertino-based company’s Web site, Jobs called on record labels to abandon their requirement for online music to be wrapped in Digital Rights Management, or DRM, technology, which is designed to limit unauthorized copying,” Veiga reports.
Full article here.
The music cartel sure loves their ineffective, easily-bypassed DRM, don’t they? They’re just digging their own graves. Put the shovels down while you still can, boys, the party’s over!
The situation is crystal clear: Apple is anti-DRM and the major music labels want to continue trying (and failing) to restrict their paying customers with DRM-laced products.
DRM is so easily removed, that it’s pointless. The mass pirates, about whom the music labels claim they are so worried, aren’t going to let a little DRM get in their way, so the only people that DRM is affecting are regular, law-abiding consumers who just want to listen to their music. The music labels want to restrict paying customers in such a way as to force their paying customers to buy multiple copies of the same material.
Thankfully, Apple’s iTunes Store does allow music to be burned without DRM to music CD to be played in CD players and/or transferred to any device they desire. We are all for selling music without DRM.
Related articles:
Warner’s Middlebronfman: Jobs’ DRM-free music call ‘without logic and merit, we’ll not abandon DRM’ – February 08, 2007
Dvorak: Apple CEO Steve Jobs is dead right about DRM – February 07, 2007
Apple’s Jobs jolts music industry; Zune exec calls Jobs’ call for DRM-free music ‘irresponsible’ – February 07, 2007
Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ posts rare open letter: ‘Thoughts on Music’ – calls for DRM-free music – February 06, 2007
Apple Inc. and The Beatles’ Apple Corps Ltd. enter into new agreement – February 05, 2007
Norwegian Ombudsman: Apple’s FairPlay DRM is illegal in Norway – January 24, 2007
Major music labels ponder DRM-free future – January 23, 2007
Clash, Pink Floyd manager: ‘DRM is dead’ – November 06, 2006
Study reports the obvious: most music on iPods not from iTunes Store – September 17, 2006
Warner’s Middlebronfman: ‘We sell our songs through iPods, but we don’t have share of iPod revenue’ – October 05, 2005
Warner music exec discusses decapitation strategy for Apple iTunes Music Store – September 28, 2005
Warner CEO Bronfman: Apple iTunes Music Store’s 99-cent-per-song model unfair – September 23, 2005
Scew em. I’m going back to taping stuff off the radio. Anyone know anyone who still sells casettes?
Are these guys serious?
“A recording industry group fired back Wednesday at Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs, suggesting his company should open up its anti-piracy technology to its rivals…”
Yea, why don’t the lables share their artists with their rivals? Or with consumers?
What a bunch of d*cks.
Impasse.
The price for Apple licensing FairPlay at economically reasonable terms to competitors must be a number of performance-guarantee disclaimers to the RIAA — that basically tolerate a DRM-free [cracked-FairPlay] for a period of time until the “kracks” can be patched. Figure that a large body of DRM-protected tracks will be liberated during those “windows of opportunity” and DRM loses much of its meaning.
What they want perhaps is Apple to license it without the performance disclaimers, thus putting Apple in default of the original terms and therefore vulnerable to a contract negotiation.
My house has a lock, and I and only I (and members of my family) have the keys. My windows have locks too (but no keys).
My car has a lock and key. In fact, there is a chip embedded in the key so ONLY that key (not a copy) will start the engine.
Physical CDs are placed in those larger plastic “lock-boxes” so that it is harder for someone to shove it down their pants and walk out of the store with it.
Retail store owners lock up their shops when business hours are over and only they have the keys.
Your cable modem has a unique serial number assigned to it that is entered into your local providers computer system to allow you access to the Internet.
Your ISP assigns you a unique IP (unless you have the option to pay more for a dynamically assigned one).
Your NIC has a unique MAC address.
Your computer has a unique serial number.
You use passwords every day to access online banking, commerce, and other types of sites.
Most software that you buy requires that you enter a serial number or key on initial installation/registration.
Those who drive have unique license plate numbers, VIN numbers, and drivers license numbers.
We all have a unique social security number.
If you own a credit card, the number on it is one of a kind, unduplicated, and unique to your card only.
When you go to an ATM or use your debit card at a store, you enter your PIN to verify authenticity.
Cable/Satellite boxes are “keys” to decode/descramble signals.
HD television – when you have an HDMI, component, or even S-video cable going from your sat/cable box into your HD TV, the television itself cuts ALL video from the outputs. There is not one HD TV that does not do this. PERIOD. It will only let you output at the inferior composite or RF level (these analog levels are practically unwatchable on an HD TV). You are forced to go with a vendor supplied DVR (i.e. non removable media) to record in HD.
The list is endless…..
DRM is in place for the same reason those things above are protected – PEOPLE ALWAYS HAVE AND ALWAYS WILL STEAL. PERIOD.
DRM is not going anywhere – if it curbs 1% of the piracy out there, then that is enough for people to implement it.
As long as there are theives, DRM will exist. That means a LONG, LONG time.
We are all punished for THEIR crimes, but that’s just the way it is.
Quit crying and embrace objective reality.
Boo-Fucking-Hoo
I don’t understand why RIAA would even suggest Apple to license FairPlay. Obiously they must not understand the encryption technology. I am not an expert on encryption, but I think I understand the basic idea behind it. The algorithm itself is fairly simple. You have a stream of data you want to encrypt. Then you have a random number generator. The random number generator is an equation used to come up next random number in sequence given a number, which usually the previous random number. You can come up with many variation of this equation. Once you have sequence of random number you take a block of data and XOR it with a block of random number block. If you want to decryt the data, you just XOR with same block of random numbers. I’m sure there is better more detailed explanation of encryption algorithm than this one on Wikipedia. So for the DRM and encryption to work, encryption and decryption software must have same random number generator. PGP as someone suggested as a model of open source encryption software do provide pretty good privacy as its name suggests. However, there is a catch. When someone encrypts an email message with PGP, hacker does not have the content of message. In the case of FairPlay or any DRM encryption, hacker does have the actual unencrypted file (if you can play one music file, then they have both encrypted and unencrypted file). Once hacker has the two files cracking the code or finding the password becomes trivial exercise (they don’t even have to use brute force method). Only thing protecting the integrity of DRM is the secret algorithm used to generate the random number, not the password. So, I believe anyone who suggest DRM can be open sourced is wrong.
There is now NO reason Apple computer could not become a record company since they have bought the rights to the Apple Records name! Forget about dealing with the RIAA, Apple could now directly deal with bands and artists through the iTunes/iTMS model. And the bands/artists would probably get a much bigger slice of the pie.
Now that would be revolutionary! Just sign 5 or 6 major bands and give them 50% of the take!
Good. Now license Fairplay at a price that makes it impossible for anyone else to meet the 99¢/tune price point. Slaughter the rest of the market, own digital downloads, and then make another call for the removal of DRM when you own 25% or more of the music industry.
If I were Apple, I’d thank the RIAA for their brilliant idea and laugh all the way to total dominance of internet music sales.
RIAA and the music companies want DRM.
I don’t.
Simple solution:
I don’t buy DRM-protected downloads; I buy CDs and rip them.
And as for worrying about people stealing music, have thoese Dodos ever heard of PUBLIC LIBRARIES? For the price of a library card (free), people who are dishonest can check out all the CDs they can handle and rip them on their computer.
So much for DRM protecting the music, eh?!
Denial. Tough stuff, that.
You are all missing it! This is the thing Apple wants to happen. SJ didn’t just wait to post his letter until now for no reason. He is a genious! Apple Computer becomes Apple Inc., Just as soon as they end up owning Apple Corps. Now they can produce music and start getting artists from major labels and become huge in “making music” part of the deal. Common, the writing is all over the place. Why would SJ pen this letter now? Why would he want to piss off the very people that are keeping iTunes going? Because he now holds all the cards and is showing his “ace in the hole”. Apple is going to start producing CDs. Look out Sony, Warner and all you other dinosaurs! Jeez SJ is brilliant! Apple Inc. is now, before our very eyes, the new Sony.
Apple as Record Company
I’m hoping that Steve’s open letter was a symbolic shot across the bow of the music industry. I’m hoping that the recent Apple Inc. vs. Apple Corps make-nice includes the right for Apple to sign musical talent to a contract and to distribute music *as a music company* without any objection from Apple Corps. Who knows, maybe Apple Inc. is the new Apple Corps.
If Universal Music Group, Warner Bros, et al don’t want to distribute their catalogs without DRM and Apple has now publicly stated its preference for no DRM, then Apple has to make a decision. I’m hoping that their next move will be to announce that it is forming a new record label, called Apple Music, maybe, and whose sole means of distribution will be through DRM-free downloads at iTS. Maybe their first signing could be… The Beatles? How appropriate. Would that put a bee in Bronfman’s bonnet, or what?
We can dream, can’t we?
MW: could — it could happen.
@ZachCube: Hey! I wrote that!
MW: one — there can be only one.
…the television itself cuts ALL video from the outputs. There is not one HD TV that does not do this. PERIOD. It will only let you output at the inferior composite or RF level…
Sympathy, are you serious? I was not aware of this, thanks for the heads up.
___________
…have thoese Dodos ever heard of PUBLIC LIBRARIES? For the price of a library card (free), people who are dishonest can check out all the CDs they can handle and rip them on their computer…
MJK. waaay ahead of you buddy.
I used to be Zune Tang/Peterson, but people made so much fun of me I changed my name to go incognito. I also had a bad experience once.
Oh, and since I still cant learn to spell exhaulted I guess everyone knows I’m on a pc and not a mac by now.
Steve should respond in about a week with another essay along these lines:
“We just tried the RIAA’s iTunes licensing idea, and Microsoft, the other major player with DRM, wants no part of our Fairplay technology at any licensed price. I even offered to give them code and keys for free, but they don’t want it, will never use it.”
“Now where were we?… Oh yes, back to removing DRM, as it is quite silly… Seriously, wanna break our DRM, I can give you 869,000 Google links to “Fairplay hacks.” Any questions?”
Best,
Steve
Maybe it’s just me but I see this Jobsian viewpoint as an attempt to prevent the Norwegians from carrying out their threat over itunes music and ipods being a closed a system. It’s too coincidental to have these two events happening over a five day period. Of course the real villains in all of this are the record companies and their RIAA/IFPI allies.
Personally I won’t touch DRM/inferior bit rate music and have no qualms breaching copyright whatsoever. It’s called sharing with your friends and family. Example: Whilst on holidays I visited my cousin at Surfers Paradise (the waves were really small so it wasn’t a surfer’s paradise) and handed over my ipod photo to his son and told him to scroll through and write down what he wanted. Does this make me a pirate. According to the copyright holders it does make me a pirate. Amongst the majority consumers they would use another descriptor…normal.
Its RIAA Guyana Brand Kool Aid. Should produce similar results for the industry.
I can see it now…
If Apple were to go DRM-free, it would spell the end of all music subscription services, as a subscription model is impossible without DRM. They are choking on Apple’s success now. Just watch and see what happens if Steve is successful with this campaign!
Dear Majors!, if you were rigth about DRM, I should pay only € 3.00 if I’ve regularly bought/DL it from any internet store before and I go to the shop and purchase the P. Floyd’s “Dark Side of The Moon” CD!
Let me explane it.
I’ve paid Apple € 11.99 for the lastest remastering of DSOTM.
So, I have got the rights to listen to DSOTM for all of my life! And this is exactly what I’m doing: listening to all the music I’ve purchased!
Well, now I want to buy a hard copy of DSOTM and because I’ve just got the rigths to play it, I want to pay only for the media, the sleeve and lyrics (if “rarely” they will be there), plus something for the better quality and the shopper.
In my opinion € 3.00 are enough! If you want the full price you had to give me back those € 11.99 I’ve previously paid You through iTunes, MSN-Music or other stores!
/Stefano
PS
I’m sure only a a few bucks will remains into the hands of Apple/Microsoft/, while the most into Yours.
@alanaudio
I reckon you guessed it in one. The Beatles will be distributed DRM-free.
The music industry are behaving like spoilt children. They have had the market all to themselves for years and they just see Apple as an arrogant upstart who needs to be put in his place.
They don’t get it. The old days are gone, and Apple is the new kid on the block with the biggest shiniest toys and the most money to spend.
How long before Apple begins to negotiate deals directly with the artists, bypassing the record companies altogether?
Mitch Bainwol (is that an anagram for something?) is either thick, or he understands precisely what Steve Jobs is saying but chooses to ignore it. He does so at his peril. Steve Jobs has drawn a line in the sand and his letter must be seen as an element in a well planned strategy. He doesn’t suffer fools, and this guy sure sounds like one.
This is going to be interesting…
I think the music industry needs to abolish the RIAA. No exaggeration – If the RIAA had its way we’d still be listening to music on wax cylinders. Get the RIAA out of here!
In other news, rumor has it that EMI is at least thinking, maybe even talking about distributing music sans DRM as per SJ’s suggestion.
SydneyStephen: “Mitch Bainwol (is that an anagram for something?)”
As a matter of fact, it is:
Mitch Bainwol = I’m a Win blotch.
Wow, what lengthy posts on this issue. To simplify it, If the bad guys have all the guns and the good guys have none, then who wins? No-brainer.