DRM-free Music: Why Apple Has Won the Marketing War: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

Carl Howe (Blackfriars Communications) submits: Steve Jobs has written an open letter defending Apple's (NasdaqGS: AAPL) approach to music and Digital Rights Management [DRM]. He openly discusses why Apple employs DRM (because the labels have made it a condition of providing their catalogs) and the challenges associated with maintaining such a system (namely, that the labels have made it a requirement that should their DRM be breached for more than a few days, they have the right to withdraw their catalogs). He also notes that despite iTunes' success, the vast majority of music sold today is on compact disks, which are DRM free. And that leads to a very compelling argument, which he makes in the final two paragraphs: