This morning while I was tiptoeing through the land of ad, I saw this campaign from Braun for their new pull-your-hair-out-by-While Jobs's comments are commendably forthright, he does commit two rhetorical "sins of omission."
First, No DRM was ever developed to protect CD's because by the time electronic piracy became a problem, it was too late. In Jobs's word: "The music companies sell the vast majority of their music DRM-free, and show no signs of changing this behavior, since the overwhelming majority of their revenues depend on selling CDs which must play in CD players that support no DRM system." Non-DRM-supporting CD players are simply too widespread -- the big four would be shooting themselves in the foot if they tried to protect CD's this late in the game. However, CD's will soon be obsolete as the Internet becomes the most popular place to acquire music. As the landscape of the music industry changes, so must the ways the big four protect themselves and their artists.
This brings me to the second omission: it is not only the interests of four giant music companies at stake here, but also the interests of the musicians these companies represent. The big four certainly benefit HUGELY from protecting their music. They are big, bad corporations. I agree. But they are big, bad corporations that help artists make a living by being artists. Musicians are already at the very end of the long profit-making food chain. They are the last to get paid and will be the first to suffer from rampant piracy.
