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The DRM walls are crumbling. Earlier this week, Steve Jobs called on the major record labels to allow online music sales unfettered by digital rights management restrictions.Should be a good, short read.Today, the Wall Street Journal disclosed that EMI is in negotiations with several digital music services to sell unprotected MP3s of its catalogue. Jobs was motivated at least in part by legal actions against Apple in Europe and the US as discussed below. But whatever his motivation, Jobs is right: DRM has been a disaster for the recording business. This article will outline the brief but sad history of DRM, the current legal attacks on it, and the reasons why the recording business would be far better off without it.
Why the sudden change of heart? Mr Jobs seems chiefly concerned with getting Europe’s regulators off his back. Rather than complaining to Apple about its use of DRM, he suggests, “those unhappy with the current situation should redirect their energies towards persuading the music companies to sell their music DRM-free.” Two and a half of the four big record companies, he helpfully points out, are European-owned. Mr Jobs also hopes to paint himself as a consumer champion. Apple resents accusations that it has become the Microsoft of digital music.
"These documents reveal that in Canada, the industry minister and his policy people appear unlikely to provide Canadian Internet users with similar protections to those being offered in the United States," Michael Geist, law professor at the University of Ottawa, said Tuesday. "Indeed, the materials would not be out of place in a lobbying document crafted by the telecommunications companies."
The documents state that public policy must consider consumer protection and choice, but it should also "enable market forces to continue to shape the evolution of the Internet infrastructure, investment and innovation to the greatest extent feasible."This type of language doesn't communicate a "consumer-centric" platform, at least not in the conventional sense. In fact, it really looks like the Canadian government is looking to let consumer rights to go the wind and allow the big Telecos control the way that the internet infrastructure works.
