The videotaped deposition of Apple’s late co-founder Steve Jobs was played in court today as part of the ongoing antitrust lawsuit involving the iPod, iTunes, and digital rights management. As CNET reports, the video revealed new details of Apple’s deals with record labels and why the FairPlay DRM was created.
Jobs said in his statement that because the record labels were afraid that a store like iTunes could lead to music piracy, they required Apple to create and implement a digital rights management system—which would become the FairPlay system—in order to gain the rights to distribute music. DRM wasn’t something that Apple wanted to do, but had to do.
In the event that this system was ever cracked, Apple would need to patch the holes quickly in order to keep its music store open. To ensure that never happened, Jobs said, the technology was never licensed to other media player manufacturers. The intention wasn’t necessarily to harm competing stores operated by companies like Real Networks, they were just “collateral damage.”
During the case, Apple has positioned its stance on DRM as a method of protecting its store from “hackers,” arguing that because the iPod and iTunes Store were not the only entries in the digital music market, they could not be acting monopolistically by locking their hardware to their own software.
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And this is why the case should never have gotten this far, even if there were legitimate plaintiffs.
“In the event that this system was ever cracked, Apple would need to patch the holes quickly in order to keep its music store open. To ensure that never happened, Jobs said, the technology was never licensed to other media player manufacturers. The intention wasn’t necessarily to harm competing stores operated by companies like Real Networks, they were just “collateral damage.”
Well, the problem is, has Apple revealed these information before? If they didn’t, well to customers, it looks like anti-competitive behavior and thus the lawsuit makes sense for them. To many of us geeks, we suspected these were the reasons and would be less willing to say Apple’s in the wrong here automatically.
If Apple shares more information instead of being secretive all the time, they’d look less of a “monopolist” then they do now with all the recent lawsuits.
Valid point. But how many details of inter-company contracts are we/should we be privy to?
Maybe they didn’t reveal the information because of an agreement they had with the music labels – end of the day the fact that in the US are suing the crap out of each other at the drop of a hat tells me there is something very wrong with that society and its thirst to aways seek revenge and believe that every time they don’t get something their way then it is a product of injustice rather than ‘how the world works’.
Actually they did make a public statement blasting RealNetworks and warning users that DRM music purchased outside of iTunes may not work after subsequent software updates.
This has nothing to do with Apple being nefarious. They were obligated to close all holes/hacks, which is exactly what RealNetworks did to reverse engineer FairPlay. The hole was plugged, rendering all Harmony songs useless.
The fact is, Real Networks should’ve been sued by Harmony users for making promises based on a hack to Apple’s FairPlay DRM.
And for the record, this case was started in 2005 less than a year after the iTunes Music Store opened… Apple was far from having a “monopoly” in the digital music marketplace or even the digital music player market.
Kawaii-
Suing at the drop of a hat is because so many people like to feel victimized.
Look at all the Apple fanboy whiners on this website who snivel anytime there is the slightest bit of criticism about the cult? If they could sue for hurt feelings, they would.
Apple claims this restriction was required by record company contracts.
That does not mean the record companies required it.
Apple is trying to point the finger at the record companies to avoid blame and writing a check.
Your ignorance and hatred for all things Apple is impressive.
Of course the record companies required it. Do you really think after Napster, the record companies were going to allow the distribution of non-DRM songs.
Yes, Herb: Crawl back under your rock and hibernate for the next 3 months and let the “real posters” post their opinions and questions.
We all know how you feel and how you love to troll this board. Now, go hibernate and leave us in peace.
Yes, and Apple required it, too.
Please don’t cry. Your IPhone isn’t water resistant like my Samsung S5.
But if the record companies are the entities that forced them to implement behaviours like this… shouldn’t they be pointing in that direction?
We don’t know who put that into the contract. Obviously Apple was in favor of that clause otherwise Apple would not have agreed to the contract.
A contract is an agreement between two parties, both of whom benefit. In this case, Apple benefits from the protection and so do record companies.
Apple is blaming someone else for something it agreed to. Even a first-day law student would recognize that.
Jobs’ testimony is reflecting poorly on the company, again.
Herb, ” Obviously Apple was in favor of that clause otherwise Apple would not have agreed to the contract.”
Are you that simplistic or just hate Apple so much that fact and reason are foreign to you??? A contract is a listing of give and take that each side plays against each other.
Why would Apple WANT to have to use DRM?? It make the software that much harder to code and keep secret???
If Apple wanted DRM, then why did it go without DRM after it finally got approval from the music groups to let it go with out???
Blind hate is a bad thing. Only thing worse is a paid troll who distorts and lies against people for money. But I am guessing its just hate. PS, If you like samsung so much why troll the Apple related postings???
Just wondering.
Got a little problem with my memory here. So correct me if I am wrong. But wasn’t this mentioned in the Biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson?
I definitely remember hearing this before in one of my Steve Jobs Biography’s, just can’t remember which one?
Anyway, to me it is not new information .
This isn’t new information; Steve already explained all this in an interview at AllThingsD, around 2003 I believe. Poor reporting from CNET.
This isn’t surprising to anyone that the industry only licensed their music to distributors that supported strong DRM, and that DRM-free music was expressly prohibited in their contracts.
The classic 2000-vintage Napster service scared the hell out of the the music biz, as it totally broke every business model conceived by the music execs. The music industry was expressing extreme concern that piracy of digital content would lead to an “unlimited number of perfect, stolen digital copies” (the music industry’s words)…. and would put them (“and the artists”) out of business.
It was only after the industry realized – around 2010 – that
(1) DRM would always be somehow circumventable (analog vector)
(2) laws were passed that were so onerous that the music industry could profit from them
(3) DRM was actually limiting their sales
… did the music industry license their music to be distributed DRM-free.
I remember this back in the day. Apple has always publicly fought copy protection and DRM. This whole debacle is why, back in the day, I ripped all my own music DRM free. Those files have never been messed with throughout the history of digital music on any device.
The great work around has always been to take purchased music from iTunes, rip it to a CD, and then rip that CD to create DRM free files. Works like a charm.
I actually remember having an application at the time, that created a virtual empty CD, and then converted the CD files it recieved right back to DRM free AAC files. Including all the artist and album information.
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Cry some more troll.
I know! Why won’t you stop?
Pretty interesting and it makes sense in that iTunes was hardly ever hacked. So this is why all non Apple goers hate Apple, because of Real player? It was shit, and they can talk as NOTHING ELSE could play .rm files except the latest version of crappy RM which installed countless other toolbars and crap. CRAP.