Steve Jobs Wants to End DRM

Steve Jobs today, in an open letter writes that Apple would like to remove the DRM (Digital Rights Management) from its iTunes music. It seems it's a condition of the big 4 music companies, but as Jobs points out, it's fairly ridiculous. While they require it for online purchases, CDs don't have DRM so it's doing nothing to stop piracy.

I found this interesting: "a key provision of our agreements with the music companies is that if our DRM system is compromised and their music becomes playable on unauthorized devices, we have only a small number of weeks to fix the problem or they can withdraw their entire music catalog from our iTunes store."

The only thing I disagree with is: "since 97% of the music on the average iPod was not purchased from the iTunes store, iPod users are clearly not locked into the iTunes store to acquire their music." The 97% is due to users ripping their own CDs (or illegally copying unprotected music). Since other online music stores use their own DRM systems, music bought from other online stores don't play on the iPod. There is some lockin.

It's clear that Apple has benefitted from this, so I find it particularly interesting that this open letter argues to get the music companies to stop requiring DRM. I doubt Apple is trying to level the playing field of their digital music dominance. I could be that they are genuinely trying to make the user experience better. Apple both talks about that and from my experience, practices it. I suspect that DRM is in the way of some future Apple product. Maybe with iPods, iPhones, AppleTVs, Macs, etc. the 5 system limit will be hit by most users and Apple wants to up it but the music companies won't let them. Maybe this is asking for too much hoping to get less, or maybe this really is their wish. Either way, I'm pretty happy about this open letter, you don't see enough of it.