THE COUNTDOWN BEGINS!

"In about 10.5 hours, we'll be living in a different world", typed a friend to me over instant messenger. After receiving this message, I was left scratching my head. I thought to myself, "what could this guy possibly mean?". He later explained to me that Steve Jobs and EMI plan to announce no-DRM music on iTunes. But what does this mean for the consumer public?

Digital Rights Management (DRM) refers to technology used by copyright owners to control the access to or usage of hardware. Copyright owners and publishers are proponents for DRM because it prevents unauthorized duplication of copyrighted works. In other words, copyright owners want to control how they're paid for exploitations of their works. The presence of DRM quickly increased following the introduction of the Internet and P2P networks to serve as a means of attacking illegal downloading of digital material. However, from the consumer's standpoint, DRM translates into what is known as "tethered downloads". Many online digital content stores, like iTunes and RealRhapsody, have included DRM with their content. This DRM scheme, in the case of the iTunes store, limits the amount of computers and portable devices that downloaded material could be accessed with. This means that the consumer does not actually own the material they have purchased. So, the first-sale doctrine (upheld by the Supreme Court in 1908) which currently applies to the purchasing of copyrightable works does not apply in practice with digital content, even though such content is copyrighted.



As you can tell, DRM is a highly debated issue. With rumors surfacing that Steve Jobs and EMI will hold a press conference Monday morning (as confirmed by the Wall Street Journal ) to announce the removal of such anti-piracy software, they are making a huge step towards a DRM-free music industry. With such a statement, hopefully other labels will follow suit and offer DRM-free catalogs for sale on digital content stores like iTunes. By offering a DRM-free catalog for sale on stores like iTunes, it shows that the labels trust their consumers.

It is obvious that one of the most important qualities in a relationship is trust. So by EMI's motion, consumers are getting the message that they are trusted by one of the big 4 (record lables, that is). In turn, this will promote a better relationship between the labels and consumers; hopefully resulting in a greater increase in music being sold legally. Consumers will take the initiative to go to outlets like iTunes to purchase their content because they will actually own the material this time. Now I understand why we'll be living in a new world come Monday morning. No longer will we be living in a world where record labels are our enemies (at least not EMI). Come tomorrow morning, we will be living in a world where the record industry is taking the steps to trust its consumers--and that is what the industry should have been doing all along.