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I'm not sure that Steve Jobs has ever indicated that he's against DRM as a concept, only that he thought it was pointless and self-defeating to continue selling

by Maktab 17y ago

I'm not sure that Steve Jobs has ever indicated that he's against DRM as a concept, only that he thought it was pointless and self-defeating to continue selling <em>music<em> with bundled DRM. Especially with BitTorrent and p2p networks being so prevalent. His opposition to DRM on music was expressed in practical, not moral, terms. But DRM on movies still appears to be relatively effective, even though that might soon reach the same point music did and I don't think there's much doubt that DRM on apps has prevented a fair bit of piracy. If I think back to how easy it was to get pirated apps for an S60 phone a few years ago and how not one of the people I know who have jailbroken their iPhones has paid for any of the apps they own I can definitely understand why Apple would prefer a closed system with DRM.

deleted 17y ago
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ugh 17y ago
I would agree with you that this seems to be Job’s view of the whole DRM thing, but it’s certainly possible and plausible to parse Job’s actions differently. If you squint your eyes a bit it can really seem as though Jobs wanted to look like the larger than life crusader against DRM. That’s clearly not what he is. If you think Jobs wanted people to have that impression (which is what Cory Doctorow seems to think) his actions begin to look hypocritical.
bigiain 17y ago
It'll be interesting to see if Steve's pragmatism regarding the pointlessness of music DRM extends to potentially sacrificing Pixar profits when the next order-of-magnitude increase in home broadband puts video DRM in exactly the same position as music DRM is today...
- ugh 17y ago
  Aren’t we already in that situation? Downloading a pirated movie takes maybe an hour, downloading a album took about the same time ten or so years ago. We are definitely damn close. Yeah, ok, so that’s ten years ago, Jobs wrote his letter three years ago, so maybe we have to wait another seven years :)

by Maktab 17y ago

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

ugh 17y ago

I would agree with you that this seems to be Job’s view of the whole DRM thing, but it’s certainly possible and plausible to parse Job’s actions differently. If you squint your eyes a bit it can really seem as though Jobs wanted to look like the larger than life crusader against DRM. That’s clearly not what he is. If you think Jobs wanted people to have that impression (which is what Cory Doctorow seems to think) his actions begin to look hypocritical.

bigiain 17y ago

It'll be interesting to see if Steve's pragmatism regarding the pointlessness of music DRM extends to potentially sacrificing Pixar profits when the next order-of-magnitude increase in home broadband puts video DRM in exactly the same position as music DRM is today...

ugh 17y ago
Aren’t we already in that situation? Downloading a pirated movie takes maybe an hour, downloading a album took about the same time ten or so years ago. We are definitely damn close. Yeah, ok, so that’s ten years ago, Jobs wrote his letter three years ago, so maybe we have to wait another seven years :)