Apple's decision a wise move

About two years ago, a friend gave me some music he had downloaded from iTunes. They were taking pity on me since my music library, all 6,000 tracks of it, had been reduced to electronic rubble when my computer's hard drive crashed.

Although highly appreciated when they first arrived, those tracks have become some the most annoying files on my computer. Every time iTunes comes across these files the music stops, and I get prompted for a password.

I have no idea what the password is. My friend entered the password when she gave me the music.

I can't ask for the password for security reasons (it's linked to her credit card), and she's in the US. So while Apple does allow users to share music to some degree, it certainly don't go out of its way to make it easy. This is Apple's DRM software in action.

Or it was as of Tuesday, when Apple announced at the MacWorld expo in San Francisco that it was removing DRM software from its music downloads.

Apple didn't make this decision unilaterally, but with the agreement of major music labels suchs as Sony BMG, Warner, Universal and EMI, which own the rights to iTunes' catalogue of 10 million songs.

Apple has to allow some flexibility to move music around or people wouldn't buy it. Their previous policy of allowing users to "authorize" five computers to play the downloaded music did not go over well with many costumers.

I guess Apple originally thought anymore than that and people might just give it away. You can't share music without paying for it, right?

Except that people have always shared music. It's a cultural thing. People have gathered together to listen to music for millenia, they shared records, they made mix tapes, and now we share digital music online.

The music industy has always put up with a little piracy, but until digital music came along, they never complained that loudly. Up until digital music came along, piracy was just an annoyance.

It's rather odd to see Apple, a company known for using draconian tactics to keep control over it own products, leading the charge to remove DRM from music files. Apprearing like a hypocrite probably won't hurt music sales.

But Apple's removal of the DRM software still signals a major shift. The unspoken message is: it's OK to share with friends, just please don't put any files on P2P [peer to peer] sites. It's a smart move.

The music labels' previous refusals to remove DRM software was seen as just another tight-fisted tactic to keep people from sharing the music. It just didn't work, and it occationally backfired.

Those who knew how to remove the DRM did so, and the less tech savvy just continued to downloading music illegally.

So Apple is now hoping the removal of the DRM software, combined with a new pricing policy that lowers cost of some music to 69 cents, will encourge people to buy more music.

I hope it works, because success might mean they take the DRM off of video files, although I'm not holding my breathe.