Once upon a time…
…a small computer company called “Apple Computer, Inc.” decided it was going to go on an adventure.
It had, in the Dark Days, experimented a-plenty with consumer electronics. It had tried creating all kinds of things: PDAs, cameras, even a games console, with varying degrees of ultimate failure.
In embarking upon this adventure, Apple Computer, Inc. hit upon a magic formula whereupon it created a product which was simultaneously desirable and useful, without attempting to make it do everything. The fruit of its labours was called the iPod.
After a while, the iPod, and the desktop software which managed your music on your computer, iTunes, were quite popular. The folk at Apple had an idea: what if, rather than having to go to a store and buy a CD, put it into your computer and tell iTunes to import it, you could just buy music right inside the iTunes application? So long as you had an Internet connection and a credit or debit card, you could buy music near-instantly and fill up your iPod with as many entirely legal songs as you could afford and would fit.
And so, the Record Labels pondered upon this idea. After a while, they agreed, but with one condition: the downloads from this “iTunes Store” must be digitally protected, so that they can’t be copied freely. The people from Apple considered, and negotiated, and eventually Apple and the Record Labels came to an agreement:
- downloads from the iTunes Store will be protected by “FairPlay DRM”, which enforces the restrictions, and is compatible with the iTunes application and Apple’s iPods;
- a computer must be “authorised” before it can play music purchased from the iTunes Store, and you can only authorise a small number of computers at a time;
- you can burn a “playlist” to a CD, so that you can listen to the music in a normal CD player, but each individual playlist can only be burned a certain number of times;
- music synchronised to an iPod can’t be copied from the iPod back to a computer.
You might wonder why it was that the Record Labels insisted on these restrictions.
Well, downloads of illegally-distributed MP3s were rife. People would buy a CD, convert the tracks to MP3s, and then share them with anybody who wanted a copy. The Record Labels didn’t want that to be possible with iTunes Store downloads.
We will never know if they expected the iTunes Store—which supported only Macs and Windows PCs, and only Apple’s own iPod music player—to be so successful that they could stop selling CDs altogether, leaving only the protected iTunes Store downloads.
What we do know is that this didn’t happen.
The iTunes Store was popular. After a little while, it was very popular. New iPod models were produced, and seemingly everybody had one. iTunes Store downloads still, with one or two exceptions, only worked on computers running iTunes and the iPod, unless you burned a copy to audio CD.
People were beginning to get a little uncomfortable about the FairPlay DRM, though. Most consumers didn’t really mind, but the Record Labels, they were anxious.
You see, because the Record Labels had decided that the only mainstream online music store would have its downloads protected by Apple’s DRM, and downloads from that store had become a significant revenue stream, Apple found itself in a much stronger position than it was when the iTunes Store was born. Apple was starting to make demands of the Record Labels, instead of the other way around!
The Record Labels Did Not Like This One Little Bit. They stamped their feet. They complained. They tried to raise prices so that consumers would think Apple was being nasty to them. It didn’t work.
All the while, consumers were becoming more aware of the DRM and what it meant, and they decided they didn’t really like it any more than the Record Labels, although for different reasons: as they were starting to do more with their computers, they were finding the restrictions imposed by the DRM were becoming more of a burden, even though they were perfectly law-abiding citizens who had no intention of doing anything wrong (meanwhile, of course, the naughty pirates continued with their swashbuckling uploads of music copied from ordinary CDs).
Mr Jobs, who runs Apple, wrote a letter on his little company website saying that he didn’t like DRM either, and maybe it would be better for everyone if we just got rid of it altogether.
Then, another little company came along. This one was a bookstore. Called Amazon. It asked the record labels if it could sell music on its website too.
The labels pondered.
They thought that if the iTunes Store had a good competitor, then Apple would start doing as it was told. They thought about DRM, but Amazon didn’t have its own music players like Apple. This was a problem.
You see, DRM is like giving you both a lock and a key, but making the lock very complicated to operate and not telling anybody how to use it. You can’t open the lock, because although you have everything you need, you don’t know how to put the key in and turn it.
This works if the only people who do know how to put the key into the lock and turn it are the sort of people who are very good at keeping secrets (and there aren’t any good locksmiths who don’t really care for your secrets).
To make DRM work on an Amazon store, you would have to get lots and lots of different manufacturers together and all agree on how this complicated lock should work. And then not tell anybody. Except that thousands of people would need to know how the lock worked, many of whom probably aren’t that good at keeping secrets.
Doing something like that costs a lot of money, and doesn’t tend to work out all that well, so the Record Labels hit upon a brilliant idea:
What if they let Amazon sell MP3s without DRM? That way, the Amazon store would have an advantage over Mr Jobs’ music shop, and cut them right down to size!
As it turned out, this was indeed a good idea, and it was successful for a little while. The Amazon store still exists today, but for people with iPods, it’s just not as convenient as the iTunes Store. What the Amazon store showed the record labels (and was obvious right back at the start of this tale) was that selling music online without DRM didn’t cause piracy to increase massively overnight. People still bought CDs if they were going to share them illegally.
After letting Mr Jobs, Apple, and its customers stew for a jolly long time until they had all learned their lesson about who was in charge, the Record Labels called Mr Jobs and told him that he could sell music without the silly DRM that nobody likes.
The end?
