Buried in the press coverage from Monday's announcement about EMI and Apple dropping DRM from EMI tracks in the iTMS was this quote from Steve Jobs:
"Video is pretty different from music right now because the video industry does not distribute 90 percent of their content DRM free. Never has. So I think they are in a pretty different situation and I wouldn't hold it to a parallel at all."
I woke this morning the glorious news that EMI is dropping DRM from its entire digital music catalog and will start offering songs and albums for download in unencumbered high bit rate MP3 AAC formats! But wait, April Fools Day was yesterday! This is for real!
A DBD member in Seattle sent me story about record labels abandoning the RIAA from her blog earlier this morning.
About 3 weeks ago, we launched the Open Letter to Steve Jobs. Since then over six thousand people have signed on. Steve Jobs hasn't taken any action since his February 7 rant on DRM. As promised, we'll be sending him the open letter with our signatures and jesters hat on Monday.
UPDATE:
Hold that hat....
No it can't be. He has, he really has. iTunes will be selling DRM free tracks from EMI within a few weeks. Read the
BoingBoing and others covered a recent story out of Europe: Deutsche Telekom's Musicload service (one of the largest digital music stores in Europe) says 75% of customer service calls were about DRM problems. Musicload has come out strongly against DRM:
EMarketer.com has a post that says Insight Research expects spending on DRM this year to be $1 Billion and increase to $9 Billion in 2012.
From the Insight Research report:
"DRM evolved to serve corporations to deal with information piracy, peer-to-peer file sharing, and various regulatory requirements," noted Robert Rosenberg of Insight. "DRM did not arise to meet the needs of end users, and in fact, it may be said to have evolved to spite the end user.
I just read about this new independent online music store, AmieStreet.com. Other than the fact that it is DRM free, the reason it is noteworthy is because Amie Street exhibits just the kind of innovation that will explode in a world without DRM. At Amie Street, songs change price (from free to 98 cents) based on how many times they have been downloaded. Artists get 70% of the revenues from their work after a flat fee for hosting and bandwidth.
We just added two new Tee-Shirt designs based on graphics from the BadVista.org campaign.
Today marks a week since we released the open letter to Steve Jobs and in that time over five thousand people have signed! We've also had many great comments like this one from Zane R.:
This from Gizmo Cafe: An EU Commissioner for Consumer Protection, Meglena Kuneva, slammed Apple for it's DRM. She said, "Do you find it reasonable that a CD will play in all players, but an iTunes song will only plan on an iPod? It doesn’t to me. Something must change.".
Universal France is testing DRM free music sales: Universal has begun testing the viability of DRM-free downloads, albeit in a very limited release of an album by French singer-songwriter Emilie Simon.
While the test is limited, it is hopeful to see another of the big for looking at DRM free digital downloads.
As part of last October's Day Against DRM, folks from FreeCulture Harvard, Free Culture Boston and the MIT Media Lab, held an event they dubbed iRony to help people install RockBox on iPods. This short video explains the problems with DRM and iPods, the benefits of RockBox, and talks a bit about the event.
Figured with so many people dropping by the site, I would highlight that we have T-Shirts for sale all proceeds go to support the campaign. You can also download printable signs and stickers or get buttons, badges and banners for your site! If you want to design a T-Shirt or website button/badge, send us a link to your artwork.
Also, now is a great time to join the Free Software Foundation!
Our Open Letter to Steve Jobs hit the top of Digg and Boing Boing on Wednesday morning causing some site load problems. We reached out initial target of 1000 signatures in just 5 hours. Read the letter and sign it today and lets see how many we can get by April 1.
In a recent post that originally appeared in Forbes magazine, security expert Bruce Schneier presents a clean, compelling argument for why Vista's DRM is bad for everyone except Microsoft.
In a recent post about DRM in Windows Vista, Bruce Schneier took some time out to mention Steve Jobs' announcement about DRM last month.
The FSF today released a paper that details the ways that hardware manufacturers can help the Free Software Community and stop DRM. The paper is a really good snap shot of what is going on right now and what the manufacturers can do. (Digg the story now.)
The RIAA has announced that they plan to sue more students by sending letters to 13 colleges and universities. They plan to send the schools lists of IP addresses and want the schools to turn over the names of the students and pass the notice of intent to sue on to the students. All this before a suit or subpoena has been filed.
Just read this over on the Washington Post Blogs
Reps. Rich Boucher (D-Va.) and John Dolittle (R-Calif.) introduced what they call the "Freedom and Innovation Revitalizing U.S. Entrepreneurship" (or FAIR USE) Act they say will make it easier for digital media consumers to use the content they buy.
ArsTechnica has an article about Apple and the DRM conundrum. The suggestion is that Apple would never sell both DRMd and DRM free music side by side on the iTMS because of their commitment to a simple and uniform user experience.
Gizmodo is calling for a boycott of the RIAA in March by avoiding purchasing music from record labels/artists that are members of the RIAA.
How do you know what labels are part of the RIAA? Gizmodo points to RIAA Radar for a directory.
Cory Doctorow had a great article in Salon today about Steve jobs tortured DRM position.
We couldn't have said any of this better ourselves. Here are some excerpts from Cory's piece.
I doubt Jobs' sincerity. I suspect he likes DRM because it creates an anti-competitive lock-in to Apple. I think he's trying to shift blame for the much-criticized DRM to the music industry, whose executives are twirling their mustaches and declaring DRM to be the only way forward for their industry.
The BBC is holding a Public Consultation as to whether and how to implement DRM on BBC content. They have a form up on their website that allows constituents to air their opinions on a number of questions.
Advogato has a good post about the issues at hand with some recommended answers.
The Financial Times is running a poll on their website in which they ask: Should music companies drop DRM? Answer the Poll you can also post a comment.
A few months ago blogger and DefectiveByDesign.org Member Neil Holmes set up a petition on a beta site run by the UK Government.
This week the government posted a response, and unfortunately, they are drinking the Big Media coolaid.
Linux World has a great post on "framing" and offers a good alternative example of why stopping DRM is important.
Forbes is carrying an interview with an MS Exec who says Microsoft loves DRM and is sticking with it, even as Apple's Steve Jobs rails against it.
I just read on Gizmodo that the NYT reports this morning that EMI is considering opening up "broad swaths" of its catalog for digital download through online retailers without DRM.
The EMI Group, the British music giant, has been considering a plan to offer a broad swath of its recordings for sale online without anti-copying software, executives involved in discussions with the company said.
In the days since Steve Jobs' open letter basically denouncing DRM and calling for its abolition, we have heard from many of you that Jobs unfairly distances himself from the DRM problem and solution, laying the blame at the feet of the big four music companies.
We wonder if he has forgotten that he is CEO of Pixar, part of the Disney Family. DRM is not just about music, increasingly it is movies and video that are protected by DRM, especially those selections purchased from iTMS.
Instead of laying the responsibility for DRM with the music companies and calling on their customers to influence them, Jobs should ask music fans to join him in directly lobbying the Big Four to drop DRM. He should be joining with Bill Gates and hosting a summit on the issue with Big Media.
A year ago I don't think that anyone could have imagined these two stunning announcements from the founders and titular heads of the worlds leading technology and digital music device companies. both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have publicly derided DRM as an impossible mission to secure digital music files with "crippling" DRM.
From Jobs open letter:
The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.
