DRM is good, give us FairPlay, Macrovision CEO tells Jobs

Stan Beer
Sunday, 18 February 2007 04:23

Opinion and Analysis

Mr Amoroso claims that DRM will increase not decrease electronic distribution. To support his argument, Mr Amoroso conveniently ignores music and focuses on video downloads.

"Quite simply, if the owners of high-value video entertainment are asked to enter, or stay in a digital world that is free of DRM, without protection for their content, then there will be no reason for them to enter, or to stay if they've already entered. The risk will be too great," Mr Amoroso claims.

By that logic, if FairPlay is removed from iTunes, content providers should be scared to give their content to Apple because it will sell less music, TV shows and movies. The question that should be thrown back in the faces of content providers and Mr Amoroso is how has iTunes managed to thrive and grow in a world full of pirate download and file sharing sites? Because of FairPlay? Nonsense. It's because iTunes is a good site with loads of content that users can legally download for a fair price with guaranteed consistent quality.

Like many interoperability advocates in Europe, Mr Amoroso believes that DRM is fine as long as it is interoperable and open.

"Truly interoperable DRM will hasten the shift to the electronic distribution of content and make it easier for consumers to manage and share content in the home – and it will enable it in an open environment where their content is portable across a number of devices, not held hostage to just one company's products."

And of course Mr Amoroso would like his company, which is in the DRM business, to be the universal custodian of all the interoperable DRM products.

"At Macrovision we are willing to lead this industry effort. We offer to assist Apple in the issues and problems with DRM that you state in your letter. Should you desire, we would also assume responsibility for FairPlay as a part of our evolving DRM offering and enable it to interoperate across other DRMs, thus increasing consumer choice and driving commonality across devices," says Mr Amoroso, most nobly.

The idea of being able to buy content that is truly portable across a number of devices is truly a noble thought. Hey, I've just thought of a simple way to accomplish that - get rid of DRM.