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Why Apple really doesn't care about DRM

« H E open source :: email
posted 2007.02.26 Mon

Slashdot reports on Apple's anti DRM again. Sadly none of the posters seem to understand why Jobs really doesn't care if Apple has DRM'd content or not. My brother explained this to me the other day and it was so obvious I wondered why it isn't more common.

What does apple sell on iTunes? Audio in the .m4p format. Which is simply DRM around the AAC format. Now here's the quick question: How many portable devices play m4p? Well ipods (and itunes but let's ignore the computers) do and ummm, no one else. How many portable devices play aac format? Ummm, ipods and .... nope no one else. So even if Apple sold DRM free content, you would still need an ipod to listen to it. (Even if aac content was sold it would probably be a year or so til firmware supported it in non apple hardware). Proving once again that Apple is a hardware company. They are out to sell [read lock you in to] their hardware.

So it's hard to tell the sincerity of Steve Jobs, when this could really be just a ploy to appear to come down on the side of the consumer, when really you are still locked in to their platform (oh and they sell more ipods since you'll need one for the DRM-free music).

[disclaimer] my wife owns a nano... we have yet to visit itunes music store

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comments (3)


1. a random JOhn left...
2007.02.27 Tue 9:05 am

It is even worse than that. How do you obtain music from the iTunes Music Store? Only through iTunes. Now what mp3 players will iTunes synch with? Only iPods.

Note that Zune will play non-drm'd AAC files. Good luck getting a song from iTunes into your Zune unless you know how to dig through the file system and find the file.

Apple owns the entire ecosystem here. DRM isn't what enables this. It is simply how the code works. Here's an example: AAC files "protected" under FairPlay will play on any iPod. In previous versions of iTunes if you had an AAC file that you weren't authorized to lay you could still synch it to your iPod. But such a situation is rare because you can't pull music off your (or your friends') iPod using iTunes. So what has prevented massive copying of of music from iTMS is not DRM. DRM doesn't protect the music from being played on iPods. What protects the music is the fact that iTMS, iTunes, and iPods are all designed to work with one another in a very limited way, no DRM needed. This is enough to prevent 99% of the population from pirating music from the iTMS.

I'm pretty sure that Steve Jobs isn't offering to sell MP3 (or ogg) files. I also don't think that he is offering to make iTunes interoperate with Zune or any other player. So he can drop DRM without any immediate impact on his babies: iTMS, iTunes, and iPod. In fact, the good will he generates would probably help.


2. Matt left...
2007.02.27 Tue 9:29 am

Very well said. Thanks for making my hacked up version of your theory clear ;)


3. Hans Fugal left...
2007.02.27 Tue 6:37 pm

Rings true enough. But there's another piece to this puzzle. If Jobs succeeds in convincing studios to let him sell non-DRM material, it's a precedent. It's that much closer to somebody else selling mp3, vorbis, aac, or whatever without DRM that "any" (i.e. most) players, including iPods, can play. Will iPod users still be locked into iTunes, and vice versa? Sure. But the free market is still there. iPod may dominate, but it is by no means the only handheld battery-powerd product that plays digital sounds through headphones.