Reactions to Jobs' 'Thoughts on Music'

Sell us our digital music free of digital rights management, and we'll be happy: That's what pundits, bloggers, activists and plain old music fans have been saying for years. But when Steve Jobs, who runs the world's most successful online music store, suggested in an open letter that music companies should sell DRM-free music, people were all over it like writers on a free lunch.

His commentary didn't come out of nowhere, of course. Apple's been taking heat from European countries over the iPod/iTunes continuum for some time now, culminating in Norway recently declaring iTunes illegal under Norwegian law. This letter is Jobs' political and legal response. (If you haven't read the letter, you should. It's a fairly cogent and only slightly spun assessment of the digital music scene, though it makes no mention of the existing outlets that sell DRM-free digital music.)

Here are three reactions to Jobs' letter:

* Norway's Consumer Council feels that Jobs is skirting the issue by pointing the finger at the music companies.

* Warner Music Group chief executive Edgar Bronfman, Jr. said that "The notion that music does not deserve the same protections as software, television, films, video games or other intellectual property, simply because there is an unprotected legacy product available in the physical world, is completely without logic or merit."

* MP3.com founder Michael Robertson thinks that Jobs has to go a step further to prove that he has good intentions behind his lofty words by, among other things, selling MP3s on iTunes and allowing iTunes to work with other music stores.

My take? Jobs is pointing in the right direction: It's the major music companies that demand the DRM that necessitates FairPlay, the iPod/iTunes system (which, he accurately points out, is more liberal than any of the other DRM systems out there). There's a fair bit of non-major-label music out there that's available on iTunes, but also on competing services that sell DRM-free MP3s, sometimes for less.

Bronfman is being disingenuous by saying music "deserves the same protections" as other media. Not just because his family built its initial fortune through bootlegging during Prohibition, but because those other industries point toward the music business when they justify DRM schemes. All the major players point to each other and say, "Well, they have it, so why shouldn't we?" Meanwhile, the number-two digital music store is one that only sells DRM-free music. So maybe there is something to the idea.

The Norwegians are sort of right, though. Prior to the Zune (which isn't available outside of the US as yet), Apple was the only company to have control over a player, store and DRM system -- and happens to be the one that utterly dominates the MP3 player and online music store markets. That's where words like "vertical integration" and "monopoly" get thrown around, and not unjustly. But Jobs is right in that they can't expect Apple to take the full brunt of any penalties when their behavior is governed in no small part by the major labels' intransigence. If Norway really is interested in consumer rights, they have to bring the music industry to the table as well -- and make sure to leave a seat for Microsoft when they roll out the Zune.