When I read the announcement that EMI Music will begin selling songs on iTunes without rights management, I had a hard time convincing myself that it wasn’t an April Fools joke. Has Apple really seen the light? Are they really going to stop locking their content to their hardware? It looks like they’ve made a first step. Let’s hope that it goes smoothly and encourages others to find alternatives to DRM technology. Actually, it looks like Microsoft is already following Apple and EMI’s lead. Microsoft is also working with EMI to sell non-DRM songs for the Zune player.
This doesn’t mean that the battle is over. There are still plenty of products using DRM to lock down content. Even newer products like HD-DVD/Blue-ray and Windows Vista have rights management technologies built into them. So DRM is not dead; not by a long shot. Libraries are very aware of this. They are still suffering with locked down ebooks and audio books. The DRM prevents the books from being used on some devices and adds another layer of complexity for patrons to deal with. Our only hope is that these recent steps by Apple and Microsoft will lead to DRM alternatives for digital content in libraries.
I’ve done a couple of talks on DRM at library conferences in the past and I’m scheduled to do a couple more this year. I hope that I can give attendees a more optimistic outlook in the next few months. In the mean time, be sure to spread the word about DRM at your place and educate your staff. There are some good overviews out there including “How to explain Digital Rights Management (DRM) to your dad” and Mark Shuttleworth’s recent post “Note to content owners: DRM doesn’t work.” For a great library-specific overview of DRM, ALA has a great DRM guide for librarians (PDF) on its web site.
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