Jobs Calls for End to Music Copy Protection:

Mr. Jobs’s appeal, posted on the company’s Web site Tuesday, came in the form of an essay titled “Thoughts on Music,” but in essence it was a letter to the “Big 4” music companies: Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI. While he said that “customers are being well served” by the current approach to digital rights management — with online music retailers using incompatible antipiracy systems but nonetheless offering “a wide variety of choices” — the subtext clearly pointed to the prospect of change. He dismissed one possible alternative, in which Apple would license its own system, FairPlay, allowing competing digital players to play iTunes songs and letting other stores sell copy-protected music for the iPod. Mr. Jobs said that approach would only complicate enforcement of digital rights management, as myriad companies would have to coordinate software and hardware updates. Instead, he proposed that labels could shed digital rights management altogether. Mr. Jobs pointed out that only 10 percent of all music sold last year was through an online store and that music is already easily loaded onto digital players from CDs, with no antipiracy features. Attaching digital rights management to music bought online has only limited the number of online music stores, he wrote. “This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat,” he wrote.