Day: 7 February 2007

I could never have predicted it. Obviously there’s a lot of buzz about what Steve said; no surprise, some people want him to run for President now.

What wasn’t obvious to me was the nature of the buzz. It isn’t about the “what” of the argument, removal of DRM. It isn’t about the “how” of the argument, the process by which we are going to see the removal of DRM.

Surprisingly, much of the debate has been about the “why”. Looking for deep philosophical reasons (or for that matter deep-pocketed business reasons) that would explain why Steve said what he did. [Reminds me of Jim Morrison and Mr Mojo Risin].

Yesterday, we had many people commenting on the Europeanness of the Big Four music-related “content owners” ….. suggesting that Steve had some ulterior motive for attacking Europe. What tosh. Suitable only for the ostriches who think that Steve’s attitude towards DRM was about music and music alone.

Now today, I’ve seen more unusual variants on the story. Mr Jobs did what he did because the “European” regulator was going to insist on it anyway; tosh again. The unadulterated variety. Only suitable for the ostriches who think that “European” regulators have some unforseen power and efficacy.

And there’s a third group who believe that Jobs can’t do it anyway, accusing him of playing to the galleries with zero downside.

I prefer not to look for hidden agendas and conspiracies and vested interests. That’s as bad as expecting people to behave rationally…..

So what do I think? I think that Jobs has worked out that implementing DRM will not scale. That the experience he’s had with Vista (yes, Vista) and with the iPhone has finally irked him beyond tolerance. That he recognises DRM for what it is, a Path Pollutant. And that he sees an opportunity to stop the pollution.

Strangely enough, Vista may prove to be a real boon in this respect. Finally showing people what a load of $%£ DRM is, how difficult it is to implement, how terrible the impact on the common man, and how futile the effort anyway.

Personally, I like what Cory said about it. Go take a look. Particularly the Disney bit.

The walls are coming down. And the gardens are getting connected again. Not channelled.

With the Steve Jobs missive yesterday, everyone’s talking about DRM. And I’ve been listening. One of the things that occurs to me is that the proponents of DRM are often the opponents of Web 2.0; it’s not clear to me whether this is due to a lack of understanding, an inbuilt animus against “openness” in general or something else. One way or the other, I feel it can’t hurt to expand our understanding of Web 2.0.

Which brings me to this fabulous video by Michael Wesch of KSU. If you haven’t seen it yet, stop whatever you’re doing and take a look. It’s only 5 minutes long and well worth it.

Towards the end of the video, Professor Wesch talks about a dozen things we need to rethink. He lists them as:

Copyright, authorship, identity, ethics, aesthetics, rhetorics, governance, privacy, commerce, love, family and ourselves.

And in a way that’s what this blog is about. Almost.

I don’t think we need to rethink love, family and ourselves. I don’t think we need to rethink ethics. All we need to do is to regain what we’ve lost.

But for the rest: copyright, authorship, identity, aesthetics, rhetorics, governance, privacy and commerce (inclusive of sales, marketing and all forms of “relationship management”), I could not agree more with Michael.

Thanks as usual to RageBoy for reminding me of this while I was reading the Jobs article again and again.

Yesterday Steve Jobs challenged “content owners” to walk away from DRM, and signalled Apple’s desire to live and participate in a DRM-free world. Great.

A day earlier, Apple announced that they’d settled their long-running suit with the Beatles. So we’re going to see Beatle songs available for download soon. Also great.

So Steve, why not go for broke and tell us today how you’re going to give us a SIM-free contract-free iPhone, with support for third-party applications?

My thanks to Kerry for correcting my headline, pointing me to the Wikipedia link and making some other really valuable suggestions for improving this piece.