This is the 3rd and last post about Steve’s “Thoughts on Music” :)

However, a key provision of our agreements with the music companies is that if our DRM system is compromised and their music becomes playable on unauthorized devices, we have only a small number of weeks to fix the problem or they can withdraw their entire music catalog from our iTunes store.

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The most serious problem is that licensing a DRM involves disclosing some of its secrets to many people in many companies, and history tells us that inevitably these secrets will leak.

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Apple has concluded that if it licenses FairPlay to others, it can no longer guarantee to protect the music it licenses from the big four music companies. Perhaps this same conclusion contributed to Microsoft’s recent decision to switch their emphasis from an “open” model of licensing their DRM to others to a “closed” model of offering a proprietary music store, proprietary jukebox software and proprietary players.

Let’s look at the real world outside the Reality Distortion Field:

  • Microsoft’s Windows Media DRM 10 (marketing name PlaysForSure) has not had more security breaches than FairPlay despite the fact that it has been licensed to dozens of companies.
  • Microsoft’s decision to make the Zune DRM a closed system was a business decision and had nothing to do with DRM security. PlaysForSure is still in the market place and will be for the foreseeable future. Content owners are still authorizing content to be sold with PlaysForSure. In fact, WalMart launched a new movie download store (don’t click the link if you’re using Firefox unless you’re into abstract art) using PlaysForSure today.