More on TechnologyTell: Gadget News | Apple News
Coming? DRM-adapted eyeballs—or at least eyeglasses? Hypocritical Steve Jobs would love the idea for e-books if you go by the new iPod Shuffle
March 15, 2009 | 1:25 am
|
By David Rothman
Steve Jobs, the ole hypocrite who swears he’s anti-DRM, isn’t into e-books right now.
But via the new iPod Shuffle, he’s telegraphed his mindset about DRM, and it isn’t pretty. Perhaps we should be rooting for Steve to keep living up to his supposed belief—questionable—that no one reads.
From Fred von Lohmann of the EFF, here is the latest about Jobs, DRM and the Shuffle. I suspect Steve has backed off from DRM in iTunes offerings partly because so many clueful consumers hate it and partly because the studios were wising up about it as a Trojan horse to maintain Apple’s bargaining power over them. But The Inner Steve is of mixed mind at the very best. Von Lohmann:
"Even as it attacks DRM on music, Apple is continuing to add more DRM to its own hardware (we recently documented all of Apple’s various hardware DRM restrictions). The latest example is the new iPod Shuffle. According to the careful reviewers at iLounge, third-party headphone makers will have to use yet-another Apple "authentication chip" if they want to interoperate with the new Shuffle.
"Normally, of course, independent headphone makers could simply reverse engineer the interface. The "authentication chip" is there so that Apple’s lawyers can invoke the DMCA to block those efforts. So this shows us, yet again, what DRM is for — not stopping piracy, but rather impeding competition and innovation."
Sorry about the tough headline, but it fits. Please, Steve. Kindly stay out of e-books, nixing your possible tablet plans if need be. Amazon’s DRM is obnoxious enough for those of us who want to own books for real. We don’t like the DRMcentric philosophy of your ScrollMotion pals, either.
Hypocrisy from Jeff Bezos, too: Remember, Amazon brags about its DRMless MP3 store, but of course DRMs the Kindle and won’t even let my publisher sell The Solomon Scandals and other books through the the Kindle or Mobi store without "protection" in use.
Detail: I know Steve’s backed off from his Apple duties due to health issues, but first off, the Shuffle was probably planned long before the back-off, and second, I doubt that his people would take this radical step without consulting with him. A little reminiscent of the Microsoft scheme to allow max video quality only if you use a DRM-friendly monitor? Don’t we love DRM?
Related: Techmeme roundup on those DRM-optimized headphones.
|
Previous
SUBSCRIBE TO RSS
Comments:
I’ve been discussing this with my on-line circle of friends, and the consensus is that people are basically crying “wolf” with the “chip = DRM” thing. All anyone knows at this point is that there is a chip—and since this remote has more functionality than older ones it could just be for that. There’s no reason to jump to conclusions apart from not having anything else to complain about now that music DRM is gone from the iTunes store.
Hey, Chris, you’re entitled. But I myself believe that PR rather than heart just might explain Apple’s iTune actions. Remember, Apple controls so much of the music biz now that the DRM isn’t as necessary as before to maintain market share. E-books? Well, as shown by the ScrollMotion alliance, Apple is quite comfortable with DRM. Let’s say Apple gets into e-books for real. DRM is probable unless/until Apple dominates that industry, and I don’t think that big publishers’ wishes would explain all of that. As for the chips, well, I think a lot of people would prefer the hardware without the gotchas re headphones, etc.
Needles to say, while I respectfully disagree, I’d prefer for you to be right about Jobs.
Thanks,
David
Drm = I don’t buy…EVER
And Ars Technica talks to a manufacturer and discovers—surprise!—that the “DRM” matter was, in fact, just another cry of “wolf.”