DRM

Two days ago Steve Jobs of Apple Inc. released an open letter, Thoughts on Music, on the Apple website. The letter wasn't about music, but about DRM - an acronym for Digital Rights Management. DRM is used on various forms of digital media from movies, television shows, and most talked about, music. It's a technology that protects digital content from being distributed by an unauthorized vendor like Timmy down the street who wants to give all of his friends copies of a song he got off iTunes. But Timmy will quickly find out that isn't possible as Apple has a licensing agreement with record companies that a song purchased from iTunes can only be used on a limited number of authorized devices - like maybe two of Timmy's computers and his iPod. This makes Timmy's friends mad, because now they'll have to go buy the music themselves. It also makes Timmy mad one year from now when he's convinced his parents to buy him the new Microsoft Zune - a device that won't play media purchased from iTunes; if he wants his music on the new Zune, he'll have to buy it again from Microsoft's store.

So even though DRM does an okay job protecting songs from piracy, it's obvious that there are still some kinks in the DRM system which negatively effect consumer choice. An example is when you buy an iPod, you can only purchase songs from iTunes; this is the same with Microsoft and Sony mp3 players. The companies have separate DRM systems and don't want to mix them together for fear of leaking trade secrets to one another. France has apparently had enough of it, and is lobbying for Apple to remove DRM from its iTunes content, or face possible expulsion from European markets. Jobs argues that Apple has no control over DRM because it's part of the agreement they made with the music companies to distribute the music in the first place. The music companies argue that DRM is essential to protect the music from piracy. Though Jobs points out that music companies sell twenty billion songs a year that aren't protected with DRM: good old CD's. And I'll point out how to get around DRM later, but first let's talk about the real problem here: cheap bastards.

The fact of the matter is DRM probably wouldn't exist if people didn't steal music. The majority of people who want to abolish DRM are people who steal music. I don't give a shit about DRM because I buy CD's and rip the unprotected music right into iTunes. If I decide I want to get a Sony player ten years from now it won't be a problem for me, because I buy physical albums. And honestly - I know the music that the majority of people are stealing is mainsream music that I don't care about anyway. So go ahead and steal it. It's a song you'll probably only listen to for two weeks anyway, so I understand that you'd be frustrated if you had to actually spend tons of money on disposable music. Maybe if you were a person who actually appreciated good music that you can keep around for a long time, you could buy CD's and DRM wouldn't be a big issue, but I suppose people are born with poor taste and I'm sorry for that.

And for those of you who think you're stuck in an iTunes vortex, here's how to get out: Burn the songs you purchased to a CD in the audio format (not an mp3 CD.) Then remove the CD and stick it in your new music player. Rip the CD. DRM hacked.

Illustration credit: Grriscout