aaron c beals

i’ve been hearing for a day now (from sites like digg, Slashdot, Gizmodo, and Engadget) about Steve Jobs and his recent post about the state and future of DRM, but it wasn’t until today that i got a chance to read it, thanks to prompting by my brother Matt.

while i am no big fan of DRM, and while i appreciate Jobs’ efforts to promote a DRM-free music world, the arguments in his post fell flat in two main areas: the claim that people aren’t locked into digital music purchases by their players (or vice versa) and the claim that the DRM-free CD model can easily be applied directly to digital media.

the first issue

ahhhhh faulty logic, Mr. Jobs. (either that or clever deception by omission.) under his first alternative — “leave things as they are today” — he addresses the common complaint that people are locked into only buying digital music from their player’s manufacturer (because of DRM), and then uses some numbers about iPod users’ purchasing to say that no, people are not locked into the iTunes store. let’s break down his argument:

what he’s really done here is taken the initial public-sentiment argument — “if you own an iPod, you cannot purchase digital music from any store other than Apple iTunes” and rephrased it as “they are locked into buying music only from that company’s music store”. notice that he drops the key word digital from his interpretation of the common complaint. this becomes key in the following progession.

Jobs proceeds to make the argument:
- there’s an average of 22 iTunes-purchased songs per iPod [ok]
- research says the average iPod is nearly full [ok]
- that means there’s 97% of the music from other sources [this follows]
therefore,
- people are not only getting their music from iTunes [true, they can buy/rip CDs]
and by extension,
- people are not locked into iTunes to get their music [music, yes. digital music, no.]
and implicitly
- people are neither locked down by their purchased digital music or purchased player [eh?]

let’s assume that we trust the numbers he is putting forth, and that Apple research is honest. he’s still making a jump from his evidence to his conclusion, skipping over the point of evidence that violates the point he has implicitly made. the key point missed is:

- it is impossible to play DRM-protected music from vendor A on vendor B’s portable music device
therefore
- the other 97% of music must be from other sources, including ripped CD’s, free music, and pirated music.

unfortunately, since none of this 97% of music is coming from competitor’s digital music stores, he has failed in his attempt to disprove that people are locked down by their choice of device or online music store. what Jobs has done here is to play a not-so-clever wordgame and drop the use of the word digital to make his argument appear more logical.

the second issue

later on, Jobs makes the proposal that all digital music should be DRM-free, in the same way that CDs — which still make up a staggering majority of the record labels’ output and profit — are free of DRM. i like the point he’s trying to make here, but he doesn’t back it up well.

that is, i like the comparison to non-DRM CD’s, which is something i hadn’t really thought about before. however, he’s missing two things:

1) CD’s are a bit harder to copy than are digital music files. Not much, but it requires you to have the physical item and a CD drive to make a copy. No so with digital files, which simply require a click of the mouse.

2) CD’s carry with them a signature of authenticity, namely a stamped bar code that says “this was made by the record company”. Physical possession of that CD with bar code means that you are the sole owner of that. And even if you stole it from someone else, there’s still just one physical copy around. Non-DRM digital music would have to carry a similar “bar code” that would not travel with the file when it was copied. Unfortunately, these things are easily spoofed.

look, i like the premise of what Jobs is talking about, and i’m happy that someone of his standing is willing to go out on a limb and propose a radical solution, but i felt that the faulty logic undermined the strength of his arguments.