Comment: Jobs is shifting blame, not championing consumers

Apple has called on the music industry to abandon the controversial digital rights management (DRM) technology that underpins the legitimate online music market and protects tracks from being copied by internet pirates.

Such a move would allow any song to be played on any device, marking a radical break from the current system where tracks purchased from iTunes, the company's online store, are embedded with Apple's DRM system and only work with the group's iPod music players. Other music players such as Microsoft's rival Zune also use unique DRM standards.

In a rare open letter posted on the group's website, Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive, said that ditching DRM is "clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat".

He added: "Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players ... If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store."

The apparent change of heart comes as Apple, which has sold 90 million iPods and more than 2 billion tracks from iTunes since the launch of the service in 2003, faces fierce criticism across Europe for locking users into its FairPlay DRM system. The Norwegian authorities have ruled that Apple must open access to iTunes by October or face legal action.

Record company executives and other technology groups such as Cisco have already called for Apple, which accounts for up to 80 per cent of the online music market, to open up FairPlay. Apple has so far resisted those calls, claiming last year that a proposed French law to make music DRM free would represent "state-sponsored piracy".

In his letter, Mr Jobs again ruled out licensing FairPlay to competitors, arguing that the industrial secrets behind the technology would be leaked over the web, rendering it useless.

Mr Jobs is not alone in calling for an end to music DRM. Dave Goldberg, the music manager at Yahoo! has made repeated calls for labels to remove the restrictions. Last year, Yahoo! offered a handful of DRM-free tracks from artists including Norah Jones.

However, it is doubtful whether calls to ditch DRM altogether would win substantial support from Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI, which control the distribution of more than 70 per cent of the world’s music.

Some groups have suggested that Mr Jobs's calls for an end to DRM constituted an effort to burnish Apple's image with music lovers frustrated at being hamstrung between incompatible systems.

The Electronic Freedom Foundation, the online consumer rights body, said it "agreed wholeheartedly with Jobs". But it added: "As a first step in putting his music store where his mouth is, we urge him to take immediate steps to remove the DRM on the independent label content in the iTunes Store. Why wait for the major record labels?"

That sentiment was echoed by bloggers who suggested the Apple boss was posturing to garner positive PR. "Apple is positioning itself on our side in the war against DRM... but I'm left feeling that surely there's more Apple can do to fight DRM than to simply give a hospital pass to the record companies?" the readwriteweb.com site said.

Jon Johansen, widely known on the web as "DVD Jon" for his record of cracking copyright technologies, including Apple's, said: "It should not take Apple’s iTunes team more than 2-3 days to implement a solution for not wrapping content with FairPlay when the content owner does not mandate DRM. This could be done in a completely transparent way and would not be confusing to the users. Actions speak louder than words, Steve."

Online music sales doubled to about $2 billion (£1 billion) last year, accounting for about 10 per cent of industry sales, according to figures from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.

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