I always knew Steve Jobs was on our side

Ever since the launch of the iTunes Store in 2002 I’ve had to listen to listen to music lovers, the media, and even some of Apple’s biggest fans complaining about how Steve Jobs and Apple were trying to “lock us in” to using their products. The only reason iTunes downloads contain Digital Rights Management, they’ve claimed, is so that Apple can ensure no current iPod user ever switches to some other brand of MP3 player in the future. If the music you’ve bought for 99 cents a pop can’t go with you then you’re not going anywhere, right?

As if that had anything to do with it. As if Steve Jobs sat down with the record labels five years ago and said “let’s cripple iTunes downloads in such a way that it doesn’t really cause problems for anyone but it casts a pall over the concept of legal downloads such that sales will be significantly less than what they otherwise could be,” and then the record labels said “Okay Steve, if that’s what you really want to do, we’ll go along with it.”

Sorry, but Steve Jobs isn’t that stupid and the record labels aren’t that smart. And thanks to Steve’s open letter regarding DRM, now we have proof.

As should have been easily surmisable for years now, it turns out the record labels didn’t want to let Apple (or anyone else) make music available for download at all. After all, why let the consumer buy one song for less than a dollar online when you can continue trying to force them to buy one song on CD for eighteen dollars? Nevermind that this is exactly the kind of myopic thinking that led to the mainstreaming of online music theft in the first place. The labels only went along with Steve’s plan because they knew something was wrong, even if they couldn’t put two and two together to figure out that it was their own mafia-like behavior over the past several decades that led to this state where far too many otherwise good-natured consumers feel that music is theirs to acquire without payment as they please.

But the labels weren’t going to let it happen unless they could do something to rig it, something to make sure that none of these legal downloads ever turned into illegal downloads. Nevermind that every song on every CD ever sold has always been able to be converted into a freely uploadable and downloadable file in less than ten minutes, in a feat of technical genius that involves clicking the “import” button and then going for a soda break. Nevermind that iTunes downloads were going to be the least likely candidates for piracy because they require someone to pay for them, whereas store-bought CDs get passed around by teenagers so frequently these days that they often can’t remember which CDs originally belonged to which friends.

So Steve and Apple managed to come up with what has to be the wussiest form of DRM ever, a set of limitations so weak that you’d darn near have to be robbing a convenience store to ever run afoul of them. No burning the same CD, in the same order, more than seven times. No putting the music on more than five computers unless you master the technical magic of (gasp) burning an audio CD of the music and then handing it to someone, after which they can do anything they please with it. And the record labels, being the idiots that they are, actually bought into this as a system that was going to stop iTunes downloads from contributing to piracy, which they were never going to do anyway.

In actuality all it’s done is to give iTunes downloads (and all other legal music downloads) a bad name. People who understand enough about iTunes DRM know that it won’t be a problem for them. But those who don’t follow the technology quite so closely, the majority of folks out there, have merely been confused by it to the point that many of them are afraid to purchase iTunes downloads – and that holds true even for many current iPod users who happily use iTunes to organize the music they keep buying on CD. The only reason many of them still buy the CD is because of rampant misunderstanding as to what iTunes DRM really is.

And for the past five years I’ve been saying that, through all of this record label idiocy, Steve Jobs was on our side. Not because he’s some altruistic saint, but because unlike far too many other businessmen out there, Steve understands that within reason, what’s good for us is good for him. Steve knew he could boost iPod sales by making music available for inexpensive legal download, and if the labels were only going to let it happen with restrictionsk then he’d accept those restrictions for the time being and worry about shedding them later.

I knew Steve was on our side with this when the labels first publicly expressed interest in overcharging for singles and other popular songs and Steve shot them down without hesitation. Unlike the greedy labels, Steve understood that consistently fair pricing is a big part, perhaps the biggest part, of what makes the iTunes Store work. And again, when consumers complained that the original three-computer limitation on iTunes purchases wasn’t enough, Steve fought the record labels to get it increased to five computers, knowing that there are in fact some households with more than three computers, and plenty more households who worry that they might someday have more than three computers, and that all of them were going to be more likely to buy iTunes Store music if the limitations were eased.

And now Steve Jobs is publicly calling for the complete abolition of Digital Rights Management, whether it be Apple’s or anyone else’s. That’s right, the guy who first convinced us that we could live with a bit of DRM is now publicly asking the record labels for permission to run that very same DRM through a shredder. The company that sold us this ever so slightly crippled music is now telling us that they don’t like it any more than we do.

You know what? I always knew this day would come. I knew that Apple’s position in the music industry would eventually become so powerful that Steve would push for being allowed to sell content with no restrictions at all. I just didn’t think in a million years that it would happen so soon. And I didn’t think he’d do it so publicly, either. He’s drawn a line in the sand that the record labels are going to have to deal with head-on now. There’s no dodging this anymore: it’s now out there that even the iPod/iTunes company doesn’t think there should be DRM. This takes the discussion out of the corporate boardrooms and geek recesses of the internet and pushes it into the living room of every music lover on the planet.

So why is Steve so willing to put this out there in such a public way while knowing that the abolition of DRM might end up loosening Apple’s grip on the competition just a bit? Well, for one thing, he knows that even with the publication of this open letter, it won’t happen any time soon. He’s asking for the help of the apathetic public, the bureaucratic governments of the world, and perhaps even his own competitors, and he’ll rest easy knowing that none of that help will come quickly. By the time we’re within range of actually seeing it happen, Apple’s position in not only the music industry but also the movie and television industries will be so much stronger that it’ll be too late to matter that you can buy content from another download service and put it on your iPod; no one will even consider doing so to be a viable option.

In perhaps too polite of a way, Steve Jobs is finally, publicly telling the record labels what they’ve needed to hear for decades now: try to rip someone off over and over again, and they’re going to find a way to return the favor. We bought the White Album on vinyl, and then a decade later we had to buy it over again on cassette. And a decade after that, nevermind that we’d already paid for the White Album twice, we had to buy it a third time on an absurdly flimsy new medium called the compact disc. And with our old CDs scratched up, thanks to the new Apple/Beatles deal, later this year we’ll all get to buy the White Album a fourth time as a digital download.

And you wonder why so many people could care less about playing by the rules, or even the law, when it comes to acquiring content. The record labels haven’t just been ripping us off all this time, they’ve been ripping off our parents and their parents as well. It stands to reason that after all these generations of mafia-like behavior from the labels, the level of respect toward the concept of paying for music that far too many of us are passing along to our own kids has been right around zero. It wasn’t that these teenagers all got together one day and decided that none of them should have to pay for music; it’s that they were raised by parents who had to keep paying for the White Album every ten years and passed that resentment along to their offspring. It’s not that today’s kids are more desirous of acquiring music without paying for it; it’s just that these days it’s a lot easier to pull off.

How on earth can the record labels reverse this downward spiral of disrespect and distrust between themselves and consumers, in which far too many instances has dissolved into each side seeing who can rip each other off the fastest? Someone’s got to take a step forward and show the other side just a bit of respect, just a tad of trust, and that’s not going to be easy. But here’s the thing: over the past five years consumers have been willing to spend close to two billion dollars on legal music downloads even though they’ve known that the music was just a little bit rigged. Sure, it’s still dwarfed by CD sales, but it’s no longer just a drop in the bucket. The iTunes Store is now the fourth-biggest seller of music, period, and you can’t ignore that. Consumers have shown, if nothing else, that if you make it easy for them to do the right thing, a good number of them will do just that.

Now it’s time to increase that number. And if the labels haven’t figured it out, then Apple has: let the world know that there will no longer be any restrictions on legal music downloads, that they’ll no longer get stuck with music that has more limited usage rights than what they get from buying a CD, and that they’ll no longer have to worry about what on earth DRM is or what hassle it might cause them, only that’s it’s been eliminated from existence.

Steve knows it won’t happen any time soon, and that’s why he’s sleeping easy tonight even after opening what just might be the biggest can of worms in the history of digital music. But let the record show that it was Steve who chose to take the issue of DRM and cast a spotlight upon it; it was he who asked the question of whether we even need it. And he’s set things in motion this week that, while they’ll take years to sort out, will make it a whole lot harder for the record labels to convince any consumer or any government that DRM is reasonable, moral, legal, or tolerable.

Steve Jobs just took over the music industry today. If it wasn’t official before, it is now. Good thing he’s on our side. I guess we’ll just have to settle for the fact that it’s mere coincidence that his best interests happen to line up with ours. But as long as Steve and Apple don’t forget that what’s good for us is good for their business, I think it’s something we can all live with.