Stan's List

Today Steve Jobs wrote a blog piece about the state of Digital Rights management in the world today. He offered three different roads that the music industry can take in the future.

• Continue doing things the way they are done now (everybody does their own thing)
• License Apple’s DRM software to other music stores
• Abolish DRM completely

Jobs is clearly in favor of the last option (which I think I can say so is most of the public). He points out sales figures showing how little of the average iPod’s music is DRM protected, and how many CDs are purchased each year. In the last paragraph he makes a plea to the European people to focus their frustrations toward the right parties. Music Labels dictate how online Music stores like iTunes deliver their music and until we can convince the labels to forget about DRM not much will change the way its done now.

According to Tech.co.uk, Apple is in the works to allow “Made For iPod” licensees that would be able to decode the “FairPlay” DRM encryption used on iTunes Music Store’s products. This move (if true) would be a huge change from Apple’s usual stance which has been to jealously protect its protection scheme from being used by other manufacturers.

BBC reports that British MPs want DRM-enabled devices to carry warning labels telling users what they can and can’t do with content they’ve purchased. Specifically, labels on digital content would spell out how easy it is to move from gadget to gadget, for example. More …