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Web 2.0 News
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| Steve's DRM Free Regime |
| Monday, May 14, 2007 |
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| In Category: General Tech News |
| Comment(s): 1 |
| Views: 3540 |
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Steve Jobs probably loves his iPod
no less than a Mother
loves her child. He, over time, has definitely understood that the
restriction on music encourages users to obtain unrestricted music
which is usually not possible via legal methods and thus possible the
other way round. It’s just the
same as when a Mom scolds her child for not to have a candy, and that’s
probably the first thing which the child would do; have it!Steve had
launched iPods keeping in mind to provide the ease of music to the
consumer's ears, wherever and whenever. In regard to which it is good
to recall
that iPods play music which is free of DRM and is merely encoded in
"open" licensable formats such as MP3 or even say AAC. Users can get
the music from anywhere which is encoded into these open formats without any
DRM. The music could be played on any player which supports these formats.
The matter of concern started when Apple started selling music from its online
iTunes store; as because it didn't own or control any music by itself, but
rather distributed music from others - Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI. An
ethical cum legal issue which then had come into picture was of licensing it,
and so Apple came up with creating a DRM system - FairPlay - which had packaged
each song from iTunes into secret software which would not support on
unauthorized devices, in fact other than iPods, in particular.
Steve soon realized that this couldn't stop the music from not being
distributed illegally. He then still wanted to keep his pie of iPod with him,
and so he came up with a DRM free regime. Some of the reasons given by him
were,
| DRM has
never and will never be perfect. Hackers will always find a method to break
DRM.
DRM
restrictions only hurt people using music legally. Illegal users aren't
affected by DRM.
The vast
majority of music is sold without DRM via CDs which has proven successful.
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True, very true indeed. Majority of music is certainly being
sold on CD's which doesn't have any DRM or similar system, but it was a matter
of concern for music companies, and what bothered Steve was his earnings, which
were definitely affected, as his customers, instead of buying music from
iTunes, they turned towards other sources. It was also noticed that 97% of the
music on an average iPod was not purchased from the iTunes store.
What next could he do? He could merely provide interoperability amongst vendor
specific devices, with mutual deals which would certainly cost him a lot. That
didn’t work out either.
The next best thing which he came out was of a DRM free
music. EMI came forward to support his step. And now, he has come out with it,
offering EMI music free of digital rights, copy-restricted versions of songs. But
the catch now is that the iPod users have to now pay 30 cents more from $0.99
to $1.29 for higher quality music compressed at twice the usual bit rate. The
trade-off between the quality and the cost does persist!
Excerpts from the industry also have to say that this very step taken by Steve
shall be beneficiary in the long run providing more business opportunities for
music distributors, and moreover the customers shall value music just as any
other thing.
So, will the majors end up bifurcating into a DRM-optional camp (EMI and UMG)
and a DRM-only camp (WMG and SonyBMG) - echoing the bifurcation into HD DVD
(some DRM) and Blu-ray (more DRM) factions? It's just too early to say anything
on it.
The testimony that time shall withstand, will solely be based on how the
consumers respond to it, only then Steve would be able to convince the other
three players and make DRM free music a success.
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| Friday, May 18, 2007 at 11:27 PM
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Your entry does throw a shade of white on the issue, but things are more or less going to be the same - you know, the DRM-optional camp (EMI and UMG) and the DRM-only camp (WMG and SonyBMG) ... If Steve wants to do something that will make a difference, he's got to tie up opposing parties together and then play a trump card and make one party buy out the other party's share out of the partnership and then call the shots ...
And i don't really know if my bamblings made any sense ... But, i hope people are on the same page as me.
J. |
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