Why Digital Rights Management is on Its Way Out

Ask any iPod hater why they detest the world's most popular mp3 player and you're bound to get one of two answers. The first is that it's too trendy and popular (this is hard to argue with). The second thing they'll mention is the DRM, or Digital Rights Management, of Apple's iTunes store.

For digital music lovers, iTunes' insistence on locking their files down to avoid trouble with the RIAA has always been somewhat of a pain. Of course, it's easy to get rid of the "protection" by simply burning Apple's AAC files onto a CD and then ripping them back off, but the fact that you have to go through the trouble is painful to iPod listners who tout their mp3 players as the best on the market.

Apple may be one of the first major music stores to try to change that, though. After European rulings that the Digital Rights Management of Apple's iTunes is illegal via the fair use policies of several countries (notably France), Steve Jobs and company have been quietly suggesting to the RIAA that copy protection should be removed entirely from music.

This all came to a head in Jobs' open letter to the music community entitled "Thoughts On Music." Posted on the Apple website, it was the first major public suggestion from Apple, Inc. that DRM should disappear.

As much as the major record companies will hate to admit it, Jobs is right.

For a typical album, the digital price is about $10, whereas the price for a physical CD is somewhere around $12. But the physical album--aside from having value as an artifact of the music to many listeners--can be ripped to produce royalty-free mp3s and lossless files that audiophiles claim sound better than mp3s. You also get liner notes and artwork, though iTunes and some other music stores are making efforts to start making these things available in a digital format. And CDs are easy to use for non-tech savvy music listeners, providing a further justification for buying a physical product.

If the CD is common enough to be easily available at a retail store, the choice is obvious for most consumers.