steve jobs

FSF's DefectiveByDesign anti-DRM campaign has a new action going, calling on Steve Jobs to take on DRM, based on his recent largely anti-DRM open letter:

"Sign this letter to Steve Jobs asking him to back his pledge on DRM by April 1. We will send this letter with your comments to Steve on April 1, with a big thank you because he has taken one of these actions, or a jesters hat for him to wear if he doesn't. We will publish the best/funniest comments through out the month!"

Read more and sign the letter.

In an open letter which appears to be written in response to recent Steve Jobs' letter about music DRM, Macrovision CEO and President Fred Amoroso argues that DRM should not be abandoned because that would diminish incentives of content creators and "delay the availability of premium content in the home". He also advocates interoperable "open" DRM and offers "to assist Apple in the issues and problems with DRM" and "assume responsibility for FairPlay as a part of (their) evolving DRM offering and enable it to interoperate across other DRMs, thus increasing consumer choice and driving commonality across devices."

So it happens. Industry leaders are recognizing the failure of DRM. The only question remaining is, will RIAA let it go? Looks like they need to learn to read first.

Read what? Steve Jobs open letter, where he writes the following (an excerpt):

"Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy. Though the big four music companies require that all their music sold online be protected with DRMs, these same music companies continue to sell billions of CDs a year which contain completely unprotected music. That’s right! No DRM system was ever developed for the CD, so all the music distributed on CDs can be easily uploaded to the Internet, then (illegally) downloaded and played on any computer or player."