DRM, Steve Jobs
For those of you who haven’t read Thoughts on Music (a short essay by Steve Jobs on DRM’d music) yet, Jobs is dead-on correct.
I don’t really have much to add, except that I would buy more music from iTunes than I currently do if it were DRM-free. And I’m not a purist — I do buy music from iTunes. But when it’s from a band that I really like (Sonic Youth, Beck, etc.), I tend to buy the CD instead, for a variety of reasons, including uneasiness with having the content encrypted.
And hell, there are simple ways to get around DRM. And I don’t currently plan to play the music on anything other than my various computers, ipod, airport express or appleTV (when I get it), so I’m not worried about losing the ability to play my music. I’d rather buy it without DRM, though.
But, let’s face it. The music companies have always had their heads up their asses.
February 14th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
I remember for awhile that you could redownload any of the music you bought. They seemed to have removed this feature but I thought it was a fair trade for the DRM. This made sure that as long as I remembered my itunes password I had access to all the music I bought and it didn’t matter to apple because it was encrypted.
Not anymore. Now there is no give. Since I have managed to keep track of all my mp3s and have an ipod connection in my car I don’t worry about it. I still love itunes but now it is a pain to transfer songs from one computer to another.