Steve Jobs, a P.T. Barnum of our age, has called on major music firms to allow the sale of music free from digital rights management schemes.
“There is no theory of protecting content other than keeping secrets,” he writes in the open letter posted on Apple’s site. Secrets. To paraphrase Ben Franklin, three may keep a secret if two are dead.
The Reader’s Digest version of Jobs’ argument: DRM schemes protect such a small percentage of digital music as to be effectively useless. And, even if they protected a higher chunk of music in circulation, it only takes one hacker-pirate to spill their secrets onto the Web.
I agree.
I bought my first iPod in April, 2004. For about a week, I thought I would buy my life’s remaining music fix from a digital pusher: the iTunes Music Store. Then, I tried burning an MP3 disc directly from iTunes of tracks bought from IMS.
Wait a second, I thought. I can do whatever I want with music I buy on CD. But, if I purchase the same tracks from a digital source (essentially doing the record companies a favor by paying for tracks I could easily find on LimeWire and saving those companies distribution overhead), I run down a DRM cul de sac.
By the math in Jobs’ letter, the average iPod owner buys 22 tracks from the iTunes Music Store. (A recent third-party audit put it at 22.85, but who’s counting?) I think I fall into that average category. I know for a fact that I’ve bought much more than 22 tracks, but I buy a lot more music than most listeners. For the sake of argument, let’s say the total is 200 tracks over three years. My iTunes library currently has 7,912 tracks. That puts the DRM-protected music in my collection at roughly 2.5 percent.
When I was in school, 2.5 percent wasn’t a passing grade. DRM, in this light, seems like a miserable failure.
Where do I get my music? I buy the vast majority of it from used CD stores, cheap and DRM free. Take, for example, a recent purchase: Lyrics Born’s “Overnite Encore: Lyrics Born Live.” I had looked at the 2006 release on disc at Borders (sans DRM) for $16, but passed it up. I could have bought it from Apple for $10 (with DRM), but I waited. I ended up paying $6 for it at a local hole-in-the-wall, without the bother of limitations on what I can do with it.
Twenty tracks, six bucks, no asinine “secrets” keeping me from using my music in any reasonable manner I see fit. Which would you choose?
I understand the hopeful pang companies must feel for the logic of the DRM argument, but don’t think that argument can assuage their fears. Do bad actors use their music in unreasonable ways? Yes, no doubt. But let’s ask that question another way. If the major music companies suddenly chose to release all of their music without DRM, would consumers stop buying it? I don’t think so. The people who would steal music already are. The people who understand and consistently respect the value of what they listen to continue pay for their music, and always will, regardless of how it’s delivered.
Drop music DRM schemes. Pirates scoff at them and they put unnecessary limitations on honest consumers for the sake of giving music executives a false sense of security.