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What’s good for Steve is good for you

Started by mathewi · 10 months ago

Commentary about Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ clarion call for non-DRM’ed music already fills more than two pages of Techmeme, but naturally that’s not going to stop me from chiming in (it never has before :-)). And there’s no question that Jobs&% ... Continue reading »

6 comments

  • mark

    2 years ago

    Of course there are self-serving reasons, but Rob, Nick, and Tony have got the wrong one. Go check out http://www.macworld.com/news/2002/03/04/jobs/ where it says: "If you legally acquire music, you need to have the right to manage it on all other devices that you own," said Jobs."

    This is a year before the iTunes store opened up on 4/28/2003. I think Steve found the labels didn't agree with him, but his desire to open up the store led him to give in on it.

    Note also that Apple bought Fairplay from Veridisc sometime around the end of 2002 (couldn't locate the exact date). There's good reason to believe that Apple was not working on DRM but had to get it in order to open up the store.

    As for self-serving reasons: MS holds key DRM patents, which makes enhancing FairPlay for new innovative uses difficult unless Apple is willing to pay MS for licenses.
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  • mark

    2 years ago

    And there's another self-serving reason: Apple's negotiations with the labels are coming up.

    He's just getting the market to be on his side when he confronts the labels with this, and thus reduce the cost he'll have to pay to get it. Remember that Universal's going in position is a few dollars per iPod sold, a la its Zune deal.
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  • Steven Hodson

    2 years ago

    Another case of JobsSpeak which deflects the problem away from him and lays it at the feet of the big recording companies which are owned (in his words) by European companies .. an effort to get the EU lawsuits against Apple and DRM nullified in the publics mind.

    http://www.winextra.com/?p=276
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  • HMTKSteve

    2 years ago

    Didn't Steve Jobs once say that even if the labels did not want DRM he would still use it?
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  • Mathew

    2 years ago

    Thanks for the comments, Mark (and Steven). And HMTKSteve, I'm not aware of Jobs saying anything like that -- although it's possible that he did. I looked around in Google for a bit this morning and couldn't find anything, although I did come across the quote that Mark mentions a few times.
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  • HMTKSteve

    2 years ago

    It looks like my Steve jobs quote may have been attributed to this: http://www.oreillynet.com/mac/blog/2007/01/the_...

    And it may have been a statement made on Apple's part but attributed to Jobs.
    reply

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