Replies to post #66092 on Apple Inc (AAPL)

[yofal]

Blue: Certainly makes it clear where he stands

...on DRM for music.

But maybe he's really interested in having an open market access to other content as well.

If Apple is having as much trouble as they seem to be accessing the big studios IP, then perhaps seeding a little groundswell with the iPod-people of "DRM-sucketh" might net them some access in the future.

Worth a try...and Jobs'll look like a hero again if it succeeds.

[KCMW]

Blue - Beatles/DRM-less/Job's letter...

I was thinking that also, Beatles on ITMS DRM-less. That would be interesting, and worth some press for sure.

Business case for no DRM:

consider -

A) 2 Billion songs sold on ITMS even though this stuff is available for free. I'll assume people choose ITMS for convenience and for knowing it is legal.

B) ITMS tunes, once purchased, are easy to bypass DRM. Export/import - lose some quality, but I don't think most people care.

So, if there was NO DRM on the tunes, it doesn't really seem to change much, does it? It would be even more convenient, and it would continue to be legal. So, they should sell even *more* songs.

There is one thing I'm not sure of, and am a bit skeptical about. If you remove the DRM 'hoop' to jump through, does it make people feel less guilty about copying and sharing? Does it send the message 'well, they are not doing anything to stop me, so it must be OK'?

OTOH, my guess is that very, very few of those 2B songs were duplicates downloaded by people who knew each other. So, they would not be losing any more sales to sharing than they are now.

-KCMW