“DVD Jon” Johansen’s DRM blog responds to the recently published Apple open letter (where Jobs tries to justify digital restrictions management and place Apple in the position of unwilling proprietor).

• Steve Jobs on Music
• Steve Jobs’ misleading statistics
• Steve Jobs on licensing Apple digital restrictions management—I don’t agree that licensing this more broadly is a good idea; if we have to have DRM at all, it is to our benefit to have multiple incompatible DRM schemes which can be broken. But this serves Johansen’s point quite handily.
• iHandcuffs

Steve Jobs tried to persuade you to believe that proprietors keep networks from being “gum[med] up”. Much credit for a more broad perspective on Apple’s DRM (called “FairPlay”) goes to the EFF’s Fred von Lohmann who reported in May 2004 that Apple wouldn’t remove FairPlay DRM if they could, and how this debunks the notion that Apple is not somehow pressed into DRM by the record labels. von Lohmann also warned us that with DRM-laden online music services the Customer is Always Wrong.

This also highlights just how much more naïve or greedy computer software/hardware and consumer electronics manufacturers are. They could have stood firm against DRM and given the RIAA/MPAA clients nowhere to go but to comply with the media we have enjoyed up to now (media that allows playing anywhere, re-recording into other media, and sharing without hassle). It’s up to us to show them that we won’t trade away our freedom for the latest addition to some music or movie library. DRM is always a bad choice.

Other topical posts on this blog include my take on Wil Wheaton’s view of Apple restoring his lost iTunes tracks.