With last month’s announcement by NBC that they intend to withdraw their long term support of the iTunes racket, NBC began what is sure to mark the decline and near total erosion of Apple’s stranglehold on the digital media distribution business and the beginning of a trend towards “reconnection with the customer.”

This trend is quickly taking over the mindshare of many of the world’s largest music and movie companies and is creating new business built upon a direct connection between content owners and consumers.

To date, Apple’s iTunes has been the only shop in town providing a wide array of content available from many of the world’s best studios, networks and labels and has commanded the lion’s share of online pay media revenue. On the road to pioneering the art of selling digital media, Apple built a lock-in to their business named, ironically enough, Fairplay.

This proprietary technology is the heart and soul of the core Digital Rights Management solution which iTunes uses to maintain a variety of options granted by content owners to end-users of their content through Apple.

FairPlay is not a technology that can be licensed from Apple and as a result Apple maintains a monopoly on selling encrypted content to the wildly popular iPod and iPhone families of products. For content owners like NBC and surely many to come, there is one option to distribute their media securely to the iPod and that is through Apple and their rumored tax of nearly 40% on revenue generated via iTunes.

Apple does not share the consumer information with the content provider and as a result these same studios, networks and labels do not know their customers or their billing information or their buying habits etc. It’s a tough road to hoe if your paying Big Daddy Apple 40 cents on the dollar.

And so, IMHO, we are going to see a gradual but consistent erosion of Apple’s clear monopoly and breakout businesses that use DRM in ways similar to Apple focused towards a broader non iPod audience. It begins with NBC and where it goes in the next 2 business quarters is anybody’s call.

Christopher Levy
clevy@buydrm.com
http://thedrmblog.com

After a well-deserved extended summer break I am back in action bringing you up-to-date relevant info about DRM.

On Monday I did an interview with Computer World Magazine in Canada which is part of the PC World Operation. When the writer first called I was a bit hesitant but after being assured my voice would be heard and not over manipulated, I did the interview.

I think the article is a well-balanced piece on DRM and the many related issues unlike many of the hit pieces circulating the Net right now. Here is a link to the article on their sister site PC World:

Study Says DRM Violates Canadian Privacy Law

I was happily suprised to see the article was Slashdotted yesterday [um yeah I did submit it on Wednesday] and here is the link and discussion in motion:

Slashdotted Article Link

I think alot of these posters could do themselves a little better by reading up on the real ways in which DRM is being used and try to remove the emotion and focus on the center of the real debate. Later I am going to drop into the action and see if we educate the masses a little further. I won’t be using “Anonymous Coward” either.

One thing that needs to be made very clear to everyone participating in the great DRM Debate:

Rootkits are Wrong and NOBODY in the DRM Industry at large uses them and they should be condemned and banned.

For you writers out there that continue to equate modern day DRM with Rootkits need to just give it a rest. This alarmist link to DRM only inflames the public at large and mis-portrays how DRM is really being used.