Former Apple Exec Speaks Against DRM

Wysz writes "Mike Evangelist, former Director of Product Marketing for Apple's "Pro" applications, has blogged his thoughts about DRM. Like many of us, he is offended by the fact that the record labels and movie studios treat their customers like criminals. While he notes in the comments section that iTunes is the best of the worst, he admits to using third-party tools to remove the DRM from iTunes tracks."

Comments

Good luck!

[sg3000]

I've been a big buyer of prerecorded 'media' for over 35 years. I have two or three hundred vinyl LPs, several dozen 45's, a hundred or so audio cassettes, and roughly 60 prerecorded reel-to-reel tapes. They are jammed in my closet with a couple hundred VHS tapes, 450 CDs, and 500-odd DVDs.
From this day forward I will never spend a another dime on content that I can't use the way I please.

Easy for you to say; you've already bought everything!

Just kidding.

Seriously, good luck with that. I'm sure, like when Homer Simpson told Moe that he wouldn't buy any more "Flaming Moe's", Apple and others will be able to hear your "You just lost yourself a customer!" declaration over their excited, yelling customers and ringing cash registers.

...with every day that passes it becomes more and more obvious that the greedy bastards who run these media companies prefer to treat me (and all their customers) like criminals

You know how just about every department store puts a don't-steal-me tag on the clothes that has to be removed before you can wear it? They're treating you like a potential criminal, too. Just something to think about before you boycott an industry that takes irritating measures to keep their stuff from getting stolen.

For what it's worth, although I avoid buying CDs that aren't real red book Compact Disc (I want to rip my music with no limits), I have no problems with Apple's DRM.

Re:Good luck!

[BridgeBum]

At least the department store removes the tag after you buy it.

Re:Good luck!

[Buddy_DoQ]

Yeah, but when you pay for a shirt at the store, they take that protection off before you take it home. DRM big music style on your shirt would be like saying you can only wash it in our coin machines, and you can't pass it down to your kid brother years on down the road. Nor could you legally rip out the collar tags that keep sticking up, adding unnecessarily to your geek factor. It's one thing to prevent theft, it's another to treat consumers like slime.

Re:Good luck!

[schwaang]

At least the department store removes the tag after you buy it.

Not in the RFID future.

Re:Good luck!

[IAmTheDave]

You know how just about every department store puts a don't-steal-me tag on the clothes that has to be removed before you can wear it? They're treating you like a potential criminal, too. Just something to think about before you boycott an industry that takes irritating measures to keep their stuff from getting stolen.

Yeah, but once I buy the clothes, the tag is taken off, and that article of clothing is mine to do with as I please - including changing it, cutting it up and mixing it with other cut up clothing, or even buying material and duplicating it. Heck, entire clothing industries exist around copying expensive clothing.

So you see, they try to prevent me from stealing it while in the store, but I don't have to agree to some license when I get home to wear the clothing, nor does the clothing give me some virus that makes my whole body itch if I wear the clothing in some fashion that is not approved of by the clothing manufacturer.

So there is a difference there...

Re:Good luck!

[nospmiS remoH]

But, like another poster said, if you buy the pants they remove the tag. If you steal the pants you are stuck with the tag. That makes sense.

In the case of the CD content, if you buy it you have to deal with the DRM problems. If you steal it you actually get a better product that you can use as you please. They actually only treat paying customers like criminals. And they don't see that. Very sad indeed.

Re:Good luck!

[bigpat]

That boils down the Music industry's position pretty well. They don't want you to "steal" the music after you buy it.

He removes it...

[gregbains]

Yet I bet it comes with more protection next release.

Let us use OUR downloads as WE want. That means any player, any time, as long as I own it. Until then I will download for free or rip from CD.

Re:He removes it...

[(startx)]

Or you could, you know, not be a duchebag and read the post.

I don't steal music. In this case, I'm refering specifically about buying it, and then being able to play it on something other than my laptop. Jhymn is the only way to play music I have paid for on my Slackware desktop, or my mythtv box in the living room. Your analogy is terminally flawed. It isn't akin to breaking into someone elses locked car. It's closer to if you buy a car, and then the manufacturer controls the door locks remotely so that you can only drive it at certain times, on certain roads, that only they approve, so you change the locks.

Ass.

Resistance is futile

[phpm0nkey]

The fight against DRM cannot be won. Visions of a future where media companies and other copyright holders kowtow to consumer demand and release all of their content in an unprotected format to be infinitely copied are ludicrous. The only reason this occurs now is due to the consumer technology gap. If I buy a Britney Spears CD, it has to work in the CD player I bought in 1990. Companies can't implement any real DRM without breaking backwards compatibility.

Expect this to change, soon. Your content will be encrypted at the source and will only be decrypted by the hardware, at the last possible phase, using your personal key and with proper authorization from the license server. As long as we put copyright law on the books, technology will be developed to allow it to be enforced. Live with it.

Re:Resistance is futile

[Hatta]

The fight against DRM cannot be won.

The fight for DRM cannot be won. Anything that can be listened to can be copied, and it only takes one technically savvy person to circumvenct it once, and the whole world can get it.

If things continue the way they have been, you can expect a full fledged War on Copyright Infringement just like our current War on Drug Users. It will be accompanied by a similar loss of personal freedoms, and be just as effective (i.e. not all).

Re:Resistance is futile

[Florian Weimer]

The fight against DRM cannot be won.

There is a solution: create a pool of free content.

Of course, right now, this mostly works for texts. Wikipedia, for example, evokes fears in publishers that only free content is passed on. More and more, their allegedly superior products are simply not relevant in public discussion because nobody is willing to pay the price for professional editorial review, DRM or not.

Sure, decent recording equipment is not actually cheap, and audio files need more bandwidth for transmission, but these costs continue to decrease. There is an answer to this, of course: playing devices which only play encrypted content, and not unencrypted, free content. But I doubt it will get as far as that because it is a very significant restriction on free speech.

Re:Resistance is futile

[edraven]

Here's the thing about cryptography. It's designed to allow A and B to communicate without C being able to understand what's being said. The flaw with DRM is that B and C are the same person. You don't have to worry about all the cryptographic chains of trust, because the desired end result is still that the user should have access to the data. Data you have access to, you can copy. It's just that simple. DRM is an attempt to have one's cake and eat it, too. It's a perpetual motion machine.

Re:Resistance is futile

[Anonymous Coward]

Silly poster...

You seem to be under the mistaken belief that we need the entertainment industry as much as they need us.

Without them we lose some easily replaceable entertainment. big deal...

Without us, they have no jobs,no money, no business...

Who has more to lose?

Media companies better tread carefully, consumers won't stay sheep forever. Something will push them over the end and the media industry will come crashing down...

Re:Resistance is futile

[mrchaotica]

There are alternative copyrights out there (GPL, Creative Commons) that give the end-user certain rights, but the original author/publisher/creator still retains the copyright. However, GPL and Creative Commons have yet to be tested as being "legal" copyrights.

Those aren't "copyrights", those are "licenses." Also, the GPL at least (I don't know about CC) does not give the end user any rights, nor does it take them away (which is why calling the GPL an "EULA" is inaccurate). The GPL only gives additional rights to people who distribute the program, and/or make derivative works. Those two classes of people aren't end users.

The end user is free to completely ignore the GPL. But that doesn't mean they can give the program to their friends; at that point the GPL applies because they're not an end user anymore.

So until GPL and/or Creative Commons are tested, the copyright laws will stay on the books.

No, whether the GPL and CC licenses are valid licenses or not, copyright law won't change. All that would happen is that we'd see if the GPL is allowed to grant those extra rights.

Here's the funny thing, though: all these people who talk about "testing the GPL" somehow seem to think that if it's invalid, people will suddenly be allowed to distribute GPL'd programs without also distributing the source. This is false. If the GPL is invalid, people won't be able to distribute the program at all. Ironically, if someone is sued for "violating the GPL," challenging the license won't help them!

The only other way is to get the copyright laws changed to strengthen the Fair Use clause. Personally, I give that a snowball's chance in Hell of happening given the power of the entertainment lobby groups.

Or you could submit a bill to eliminate copyright entirely (the Constitution only says that Congress may make copyright laws, not that it must, I think), but that would only have a snowball's chance in the sun itself* of passing.

Nevertheless, that kind of thing is exactly what I hope for. Maybe we'll have a chance once the "piracy" (i.e. civil disobedience) destroys the power of the companies that make up the entertainment industry, so that they can't afford to pay lobbyists anymore.

*According to Dante, Hell isn't actually all that hot, depending on which circle you're talking about, so a snowball in the sun has even less of a chance than one in Hell.

Department store tags vs. DRM

[Senes]

When you buy clothes from a department store, the tag is removed and you are free to wear alter, and lend out the clothing however you see fit.

When you buy media with DRM, you take the tag home with you so it can tell you how to use the product you bought and try to get you in jail for shutting it up.

Re:Department store tags vs. DRM

[Golias]

When you buy clothes from a department store, the tag is removed and you are free to wear alter, and lend out the clothing however you see fit.

That's because their shirt can't instantly become six billion more shirts, which you can give away for free (or sell for next to nothing, like AllofMP3.com does) and take away any reason for anybody else to buy one from them.

Selling recorded music is a multi-million dollar industry, the owners of which surely don't want to just give up, just because technology has made it fantastically easy to rip them off.

If you don't like DRM, suggest another way for them to sell music. (And no bullshit answers about giving it away and making their money off concerts and t-shirt sales. Suggest a solution which doesn't involve simply giving up all that sales revenue.) If you can't come up with anything better than what's out there now, why would you be surprised that they can't either, and are desperately experimenting with so many bad ideas?

Re:Department store tags vs. DRM

[Golias]

I can't imagine spending more than $50 to copy many items, a shirt might be less than a few dollars. On the other hand, copying a CD costs about $500 ($450 for the PC, $40 for the CD-R drive, $10 for the pack of CDs).

That's got to be just about the most stupid analysis I've ever seen in my life.

Cost of producing six billion shirts at $50 a pop: $300,000,000.00

Cost of producing six billion music tracks via torrents: $450.99

($450.00 for the PC plus $0.99 for the track download from the iTunes Music store. If you can find a server to start the torrents from, your bandwidth cost can be $0, because you can just use the free Wi-Fi at a library or coffee shop.)

Re:Department store tags vs. DRM

[theStorminMormon]

If you don't like DRM, suggest another way for them to sell music. (And no bullshit answers about giving it away and making their money off concerts and t-shirt sales. Suggest a solution which doesn't involve simply giving up all that sales revenue.) If you can't come up with anything better than what's out there now, why would you be surprised that they can't either, and are desperately experimenting with so many bad ideas?

This seems a little over-the-top to me. Consider this example. Ford has just "invented" the assembly line. It's now possible to build cars extremely cheaply. In other words, the cost or reproduction has gone down by an order of magnitude. Let's say there had been car-makers before that, but they made custom cars to order, one at a time. They would see this sudden new method of production as a threat, and try to artificially maintain inflated prices. Would they be justified in shutting Ford down?

I'm well aware this analogy doesn't really work, but there are elements of it that are important. Firstly, the real change here is in production. Music distributors DO NOT MAKE MUSIC. That's what bands do. So when you buy a CD from a Warner or whatever, you're not paying Warner for the music, you're paying Warner for the CD. Of course, you're also paying Warner to market the CD, you're paying them to possible promote the band. And part of your money is actually going to fund the band itself.

So essentially the music industry has become a big middle man. They don't make music, they promote and distribute it. But now they are no longer needed for distribution. The method of production has gotten cheaper and anyone with a PC can do it. They arguably don't need to promote it either - with the internet it's possible to disseminate information for free - or almost.

So before you, or anyone gets all high and mighty about "they make a living selling music, blah blah blah" you have to ask yourself - are they really needed any more? And if not, then why should we keep them around? We don't keep blacksmiths around either. Of course the industy has a vested interest in keeping itself alive, but that doesn't mean we have to roll over and let them extort money from us when they no longer really have much to offer us.

So what should replace this business model? Clearly bands need to get paid or we won't have full-time artists anymore. So money needs to change hands. That is clear. I'd recommend dropping the price on physical CDs considerably - like $5 bucks a pop. If the good is sufficiently elastic you'll make the m oney back in increased revenue. Shift to an online model. There are plenty of sites that want to sell music cheap. Reduce the price for an mp3 to 10 cents or something. Share the profits more equitably between distributor and band. There you go. Let fan sites handle promoting.

That may or may not be the perfect solution, but here's the key point. It's not the consumer's job to come up with a new business model. And if the currrent business model has become irrelevant, we don't have an obligation to develop a new one before pointing out that the current one is irrelevant.

Let's be realistic. Change is inevitable. The industry can fight it, and be crushed eventually, or they can downsize and reinvent themselves. Painful, yes, but nothing like the alternative.

stormin

Re:Department store tags vs. DRM

[Digital Vomit]

Selling recorded music is a multi-million dollar industry, the owners of which surely don't want to just give up, just because technology has made them completely unnecessary.

There. Fixed that for you. ;-)

Re:Department store tags vs. DRM

[shawb]

It's not a valid point. One of the most common test for a logical construction is to replace another conclusion but follow the same logical construct.

The argument that he is putting forth is:
It's okay to do whatever you need to do to keep a job.
The music execs need to put DRM in music to keep their job.
Therefore it's okay for the music execs to put DRM in music.

Now, you change the argument, but keep the same construction.
It's okay to do whatever you need to do to keep a job.
Guards in Nazi concentration camps had to kill thousands of people to keep their jobs.
Therefore it's okay for guards in Nazi concentration camps to kill thosands of people.

Note that I'm not equating the use of DRM to the atrocities commited in World War II, I'm just using it to disprove the logical construction used. And I personally don't really care if music companies want to include DRM, so long as it is disclosed to the consumer prior to purchase, or the consumer can return the merchandise once they find out about the DRM. DRM in and of itself isn't evil; it could be mitigated to allow for fair trade, even though I don't know of any CDs that put the DRM info right on the packaging and I know for a fact that you can no longer return a CD except for defect in manufacturing.

Re:Department store tags vs. DRM

[theStorminMormon]

All you've succeeded in doing is creating a boo-hoo story for the VP in charge of the Sony Music dvision. And it's legitimate. But it doesn't change the fact that when the market changes in fundamental ways some business models do not survive. Period. You have this HUGE industry that was essentially created to solve a problem: distribute music to consumers. At the time of creation the only method of distribution was physical. It was expensive and time-consuming to create phonographs, 8-tracks, cassettes, etc. So now you have this huge corporation that was built up around the fundamental problem: create physical media to distribute music.

Then along come computers and the internet. Now you can make endless copies of the music (digital files) and you have a method to distribute them without significant additional overhead (peer-to-peer over the internet). These are the facts of life. And it means that the entire music distribution infrastucture has become an out-dated dinosaur.

You seem to want us to understand the plight of the Sony VP. But that's not really relevant. The problem isn't that people are stealing music. That's a symptom of the greater problem: there's no longer a need for giant distributors with extensive physical capital to fulfill. And that is not anybody's fault. That doesn't make stealing OK. But everybody not stealing is not going to suddenly eliminate the market inequities.

The problem is that we're going through another economic revolution. Just as tremendous social upheavel accompanied the Industrial Revolution, this economic revolution from physical media to digital media is going to cause huge waves (maybe not AS huge, that remains to be seen). And just as some labor groups fought the onset of the Industrial Revolution, the physical media conglomerations are going to fight this revolution. But they have just much chance of winning as the Luddites did of banning machinery and factories.

We're completely wasting our time, efforts and money if we try to either prop up a failing and antiquated system or try to divert attention from the underlying flaws. The world has changed - and the only prudent thing we can do is try to change with it. That goes for you, me, and Sony VPs everywhere.

-stormin

criminals?

[heatdeath]

Like many of us, he is offended by the fact that the fact that the record labels and movie studios treat their customers like criminals.

Well, I'm not sure why he would be offended, since most of their customers *do* display a propensity to steal their music.

It's like being offended that walmart has stolen goods detectors at the exits.

Re:criminals?

[egypt_jimbob]

But Wal-Mart doesn't put stolen goods detectors in your house.

Re:criminals?

[Anonymous Coward]

With all due respect, I think you're missing the point. We all agree that copyright infringement, like stealing, is bad.

The question is how far groups should be allowed to go to prevent it. The U.S. constitution imposes many limits on police powers, searches and seizures, rights of the accused, and so forth. This is because if one only focuses on the original crime, it's easy to overlook crimes committed in the name of preventing it. Without such protections, one gets witch trials, McCarthyism, and so on. (Lucky we're past all of that now, eh?)

How far should companies be reasonably allowed to go to prevent theft of their services? Wal-mart-style carry-out detectors? Sure. Impose random audits on customers, where they have to spend weeks and a great deal of money verifying compliance, under the threat of exorbitant legal action? Surely not. Impose a special system, crafted in the name of preventing infringement, which locks the customer in to further purchases from this supplier (and locks out competitors), or the original product will cease to function? And coincidentally keep raising prices for said purchases? Because that's exactly where they've been going with this. Preventing piracy is a red herring.

My DVD thinks I am a criminal

[Datagod]

What I really like is that how you go out and fork over $20 for a new DVD, then as soon as you put it in the player you are forced to watch a short video telling you such crap as "You wouldn't steal toys, you wouldn't steal shoes, why would you steal a movie?" I own the stupid thing, and they make me so mad I rip a copy just to get rid of their garbage. And by the way, "Own it now!" is their line...so I guess if we own it, we can do what we want with it...

Why is it...

[flyinwhitey]

Why is it that someone hasn't proposed a reasonable alternative to DRM.

The record companies want to make money, people want to control their stuff. So instead of bitching about it, then bending over and taking it, why doesn't someone come up with an alternative.

It seems like the extremes of this discussion are all I ever hear anymore. What is being proposed by people who see a business opportunity in a good compromise that satisfies everybody? Is there such a thing?

DRM not always bad

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a developer who contributes both to closed and open-source projects and I don't see the use of DRM is necessarily a bad thing. There are an awful lot of people who are being hurt by content/software piracy these days and the mac platform is http://www.macserialjunkie.com/>no exception. Apple (and nearly every other developer I know of) is aware of this forum and the thiefs that hang out there. Moreover, everyone expects the problem will only get worse as the market share increases.

I agree that DRM isn't the whole solution to this problem, but I don't think it should be dismissed outright. What is wrong with wanting money for working?

Re:Summary nearly as long as the article

[jmorris42]

> He's basically fed up with format change, and he's ticked off that there are things he
> thinks he ought to be able to do with the new format (copy it freely to every digital
> device) that he can't do.

No, it isn't the format change. We all know that is unavoidable. This is different. This is THEM assuming total control. In the past, all media was essentially free. You could loan it to a friend, make a working copy (dump an LP to tape for the road, etc) make mix tapes, etc. You couldn't make and sell copies, not because of a technoligical restriction but simply because, well it is illegal. Not anymore. They want the right to dictate where and how you will play it, how long you can play it and eventually will insist on the right to charge you by the play. Unless we say NO, right now.

Re:DRM = Big Brother

[Darth Maul]

Sorry, but the cynic in me just realizes the fact that people are too stupid to know what's going on, so before we know it all media and computers will be DRMed. Say goodbye to using media as you wish (portable players, computers, etc) and also hobby coding on your computer. Only "approved" software will run. But it will creep in as "protection" from virus, malware, etc.

People are idiots, and won't know what's going on until way after it's too late.

Sure, the few of us that get it can boycott all we want, but everyone else is still buying rap "music" and britney spears albums. They don't care what rights they have to give away in return.

Re:What I dislike...

[jacksonj04]

To be honest I wouldn't care about DRM if there was a universal standard for everything. If I buy a CD track over iTunes I have no problem with it being DRMed on the condition that I can also play it on anything else, be it a 'Windows Media' device or my TV or my phone.

Saying you want new music to always be backwards compatible is like saying you want all new music to play on an old vinyl deck. With DRM at least there is a record of "this person has already bought this, so in fact we *can* authorise this download without charging them again".

If I buy a video with this 'universal DRM' why can I not for example go to my friend's house, plug in my username and password and it appears in my 'media list'. Steam does it for games, why can't the same be done for media? And whilst they're at it I would appreciate a way to add all my old media and games to the list as well.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

boycott is probably the *ONLY* way to stop them

[Stephen Samuel]

This happened before with games and other software in the '80s They tried some seriously intrusive copy protection and found that it just angered their good customers and cut into sales, so now copy protection on games is pretty pedestrian and generally kept minimal.

If people walk away from DRM media, and tell their friends to do the same thing, then they'll go away. Period. If people blindly let themselves get suckered into this process and put up with it, then they'll continue to get shafted.

You get what you put up with. it was true when workers struck against nasty employer tactics in the '20s and '30s and it's true now with DRM. When people stopped putting up with the nasty stuff, the laws finally got changed to something that recognized the source of the unrest.

He should become a producer

[cryfreedomlove]

I understand that this guy wants to live in a world where entertainment data (audio CD, DVD, downloaded audio, etc) is released without DRM. He can create that world today. All he has to do is produce content that everyone wants and release that content with no DRM at all.

The best way to win over the hearts and minds of the people is to live your life as a shining example of the good behavior that you want emulated. That's going to be much more effective world change for DRM than whining in a blog.

I have a solution

[freeweed]

If you don't like DRM, suggest another way for them to sell music.

Ok, here's one: sell music without DRM. CDs, mp3s, DVDs, whatever floats your boat.

CD burners have been available for nearly a decade now. Mass copying of digital music has been feasible, and known to your average Joe, for years now. Broadband is pretty standard in most countries. Yet people still buy CDs by the millions.

Why?

Because the vast majority of people are honest. They'd LIKE to pay for things. I know it's easy to assume everyone is out to steal from everyone else, but the numbers simply don't reflect this. Mass copying of free digital music has been available and easy to use for years now, and yet people still buy CDs by the truckload.

You're always going to lose some sales due to piracy, sure. Maybe even a decent percentage (10-20%). But overall, most people are quite willing to give up some money for a quality product. Don't believe me? Here in Canada, copying CDs for personal use is 100% legal. Most interpretations of the law say that sharing/downloading mp3s is also 100% legal. Yet CDs still sell, and sell well. Record stores aren't going out of business in droves, people still have a collection of CDs in their cars, and the music industry is still making a profit.

Should copying be illegal? Maybe. That'll stop the casual users. DRM will never stop the dedicated. They're just not interested in buying your music. Short of not releasing it, you'll never stop these people. But the masses will happily pay for unencumbered mp3s.

It's kind of like bottled water. Water is free, right? Then why is bottled water a multi-million dollar industry?

Convenience. Imagine a music store with everything, and no DRM. I'd be paying thousands every year for music at the rate I chew through it, even though I could easily get it for free. DRM doesn't stop music from getting onto P2P networks, and it never will. All it does is stop me from buying music from iTunes, etc.

Tipping Point

[rlp]

I reached the same conclusion about three years ago. I've not bought any CD's since. I did try out iTunes and bought a few tracks on-line. The trouble with iTunes, is that it was a hassle to move the music to my MP3 player or to create mix CD's for my car. Possible yes - but ultimately too much trouble. So, I cancelled my iTunes account.

I think with the Sony Rootkit and the publicity it's been getting, that we're reaching a tipping point. Music sales are down. People are already frustrated that they can't use music that they paid for, in devices that they paid for. Now they have to wonder - is this going to damage my PC? Expose it to malware and possible attack? The industry shot themselves in the foot years ago. They are continuing to do so, and have switched to heavy caliber weapons. It will be interesting to see how well music sells this holiday season.

Re:Summary nearly as long as the article

[radish]

There are a few differences between this and a regular format change.

1) A format change has an upside. Typically - better quality, or more features. Vinyl sounded better than wax drums, tape allowed recording, CD sounded better than vinyl, etc. A CD with "copy protection" offers me nothing more than a regular CD, in fact - it offers me less. Unless you count a rootkit as a bonus.

2) A format change requires repurchase of equipment and media for technical reasons, not political ones. I had to rebuy my LPs on CD because my record player doesn't have an appropriate laser pickup. The only reason I can't play my girlfriend's iTunes downloads on our living room hifi (with networked audio player) is that someone at Apple decided I shouldn't be allowed to. There is no technical reason whatsoever, just policy.

3) A format change is voluntary. I still have records, I still buy records. I'd like to still buy regular CDs, as would (I think) most people. That's becoming increasingly difficult. NO ONE IS ASKING for this format change. It's not voluntary.

Having does not mean using

[SuperKendall]

What I really dislike about DRM is the general consensus that everything actually will have DRM in the future.

While I think most devices will have some form of DRM, I am not as worried about devices having DRM as having to use it.

I don't care if Blu-Ray has the most ass-backward DRM the universe has yet devised - as long as I can burn my own content on a Blu-Ray disc and play it using that player, and give it to other people to play. Similarily while the iPod supports DRM it also supports ways to use the iPod that involve no DRM whatsoever. The DRM does increase device cost but that is an up-front and one-time cost I can roll my eyes over, and watch as at times that cost becomes too great and prevents adoption of what would otherwise be a good device.

As long as there is a path for free content to flow through a system I am not as worried about DRM because it lets media producers willing to relinquish controls compete on the basis of freedom to use media. If mainstream media becomes locked down too tightly, new avenues of media will spring up that are more open. You can see that today with online movie sites, even with news video fed from various bloggers. Not all producers of media are interested in a total lockdown of thier work, and those people will have the benefit of a wider natural distribution rather than having to pay people to take something.