Cory Doctorow attacks Jobs over DRM

Self-described "lifelong Apple fan boy" (but defecting to Linux) Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing (and also a novelist and an Electronic Frontier Foundation Fellow) has now appeared in the almost-forgotten Salon with a piece on Steve Jobs' iTunes dance. He says:


Like many if not most people who are not Apple apologists, Doctorow suspects Jobs is just a hypocrite. He writes:

Actions speak louder than words. Artists have asked -- begged -- Apple to sell their music without DRM for years. From individual bestselling acts like Barenaked Ladies to entire labels of copy-friendly music like Magnatune, innumerable copyright holders have asked Apple to sell their work as open MP3s instead of DRM-locked AACs. Apple has always maintained that it's DRM or nothing. These artists believe that the answer to selling more music is cooperating with fans, not treating them as presumptive pirates and locking down their music.

And, he adds, "Apple even applies the no-copying measure to audio released under a Creative Commons license (for example, my own podcasts), which prohibits adding DRM."

Then there's the matter of the movies and TV shows sold through the iTunes Store. The first adopter of this marketplace was Disney/Pixar. Jobs is the single largest shareholder in Disney/Pixar. Apparently, he forced himself to add DRM to his Pixar movies, turning a deaf ear to his own impassioned arguments to leave the DRM off.

The argument that iPod owners don't have quite enough brainpower to cope with the iTunes Music Store selling both DRM and non-DRM content is also disposed of:

But if this is so, how is it that Apple currently offers DRM-free podcasts alongside DRM'ed, pay-for-use podcasts in the selfsame store?

Jobs's arguments against licensing his DRM -- which DRM-cracker "DVD Jon" Johansen described as "bogus" -- also fall, because it only takes three minutes for any iTMS release to appear on a peer-to-peer network.

I've already written about this in Why Steve isn't going to upset the DRM Apple cart, but the debate is going to run and run....

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