This post is in response to this comment and this blog posting.

I think you’re making a few assumptions:

1. DRM prevents piracy.
2. A music store that doesn’t use DRM is like Napster or will have a real impact on the amount of piracy.
3. Selling music online is a natural monopoly.
4. You don’t want to change technology, ever.

Allow me to address these one at a time:

1. DRM does not stop piracy. For anyone who doesn’t know, a quick public key cryptography lesson and why DRM doesn’t work can be found here. The bottom line? The “attacker” of the crypto is also the intended recipient, this means that you want the attacker to be able to read the content at the same time prevent them from reading the content. Makes sense? No? It shouldn’t.

   I’m sure some of you will say; then why isn’t the DRM on the iTunes Music Store cracked right now? Simple, they obfuscate the key (making it difficult but by no means impossible to read). If all music were DRM I’d be one of the first people to break out my old x86 assembly book to try and figure out how they store the key. See the difference between encoding and encrypting.

2. First, online music stores aren’t anything like Napster and other P2P protocols. A music store allows users to download songs as they are purchased—read PAID FOR. Napster and other P2P protocols place no controls on who can get what, this means you can get content without paying for it. Obviously there is a major difference between P2P and online music stores.

   Second, will an online music stores without DRM have a really impact on the amount of piracy? My vote is for no. Why? Point #1—with or without DRM, I’m going to be able to get my content in an unlocked format somehow.

3. Selling music online is not a natural monopoly. It’s cheap and easy to setup an online music store—the only difficult part is licensing. There is no reason why we couldn’t have a million music stores online (we have a million brick-and-mortar music stores). The only thing that is enforcing the monopoly in the online stores is the DRM.

   When I buy a CD from a brick-and-mortar store, I can do what I want with it—I can play it in any CD player, I can rip it to any mp3 player, and I can make all the copies I want. Conversely when I buy DRMed audio file I can’t do what I want with it—I can’t play it in any mp3 audio playing program, I can’t put it on any mp3 player, and I can’t make all the copies I want.

   An example would better describe the problem: I buy 10 albums from the iTunes Music store, I can only play these songs in iTunes and on my iPod. Later I find an album on a different music store but the songs are DRMed so I can only play them in Windows Media Player and on an iRiver—I don’t buy the album from the second store because I don’t want to have to use 2 different audio playing programs and mp3 players. The iTunes monopoly continues. Without DRM I don’t have this problem I can play my music in anything, on anything.

4. Today Apple (in my opinion) makes some of the best hardware and software in the industry; What about in 10 years? Let’s say that I’ve been buying music from the iTunes Music Store for the last 10 years, I have invested a meager $15/month. $15*12*10=$1800. I decide I don’t like Mac OS X or Windows, I would rather use Linux. My iPod also breaks and I would rather get an iRiver . Guess what? I can’t make the transitions because I would loose all of my music. Is that fair?

I think you have to go through all of the articles on the Apple-France DRM debate and replace all instances of “Apple” with “Microsoft” and see how you like the ideas then.