Apple's Ready to Share the Pie

It looks like Europeans have picked the wrong target! Apple Inc. indicated it would open its iTunes store to other portable players besides its ubiquitous iPod if the world's major record labels abandoned the anti-piracy technology that serves as the industry's security blanket.

Jobs, Apple's CEO, made the case for abolishing the protections known as "Digital Rights Management," or DRM, in an open letter posted Tuesday on the Cupertino-based company's Web site. Like many things the trendsetting Jobs does, his call for change created an almost immediate buzz.

Supporters hailed Jobs for leveraging Apple's growing clout as one of the world's largest music sellers in an attempt to remove restrictions that annoy many consumers. Critics, though, derided the message as a disingenuous maneuver designed to soften a recent backlash in Europe, where iTunes' incompatibility with other portable music devices besides the iPod has been branded has anticompetitive.

Jobs' essay, dubbed "Thoughts on Music," cited the recording labels' anti-piracy technology as the main reason music sold through iTunes can't be transferred to other portable players besides the iPod.

Those same DRM protections also prevent the iPod from playing music bought from many other competing online stores. If not for the DRM safeguards, Jobs asserted that Apple would be able to create a more flexible system that would allow iTunes music to work on other devices, such as Microsoft Corp.'s recently introduced Zune.

Jobs suggested that consumers unhappy with the status quo should urge the world's four largest labels - Universal Music Group, EMI, Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group - to sell their online catalogs without the DRM restrictions. Those four labels distribute more than 70 percent of the world's music.

"Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace," Mr. Jobs wrote. " Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly."

"I think Steve is finally saying something he has wanted to say for a long time," said Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey. "He is not saying this just to grandstand. He really thinks this could open up the market."

True, true, but we still liked him better when he was just plain Jerkoff - or the guy who wouldn't flush between good ideas.

http://www.nysun.com/article/48124