Steve Jobs’ open letter on DRM
Boy, when Steve Jobs writes, everybody from bloggers to mainstream media and from both the technology industry and the entertainment industry responds. Engadget, Boing Boing, The New York Times and more. Imagine if Steve were to start blogging (real Steve not the fake Steve).
As a blogger who blogs about Apple and all things Mac, I feel that I’m obligated to write some sort of respond regarding the open letter.
I am referring to Steve’s little essay, “Thoughts on Music“. You could read it over at Apple, or use the summarizing tip as mentioned before *wink*.
In the article, Steve Jobs makes it clear that he, the CEO of Apple, which is a company that is currently has the largest legal online music downloading service (iTunes Store), does not like DRM. He basically ask the industry to start thinking about selling music online without DRM. Why not? since the music industry has been selling DRM free music for ages in CDs.
This haven’t been such a big deal over here, because we still can’t access iTunes Store DRM or no DRM. The iTunes services is not global. There is however a trick, loop hole you could do to gain access to the service which involved a gift card and a U.S. address. It has been mentioned before in myMacBUZZ.
I’m more interested in iTunes opening up to the world. What are your thoughts on this?
3 Comments
It would be good to include chinese songs? ITUNE open up, good…..
The sillyness of the notion that the music industry has been selling a DRM free product for years (in the form of CDs) and therefore should not be pushing DRM protection for its digital content misses the point of DRM entirely. CDs and online digital distribution are two entirely diffrent animals
In the old days, before the internet and file sharing, a CD pemited one user at a time to reply the content of a CD. Now, with the state of digital technology being what it is, a the content of a single CD can be uploaded to a server, placed on the internet and (in theory) everyone on the face of the earth could obtain the music for free. Apple and oranges.
As to Steve Jobs. Brilliant guy, but selfish. Had he opened Mac programming so that 3rd party developers could write software for his computer, Bill Gates would be parking cars someplace right now. He would not be the richest man in the world. Jobs made the exact same mistake with his selfish, protective, and senseless iPod/iTunes monoply. Now Jobs wants everyone else to do away with their DRM so that he can maintain his own version of DRM through the iTune/iPod mess.
Too bad that Styeve Jobs never learned how to play well with others.
[...] in February, Steve Jobs published an open letter titled “Thoughts on Music” where he proposed music labels remove DRM from their music. [...]
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