[cookiecaper]

Please dude. iTunes was very late to the game. eMusic? Most early music stores had no DRM.

Jobs leveraged the popularity of the iPod with iTunes (which, by the way, is not allowed to talk to any other program under normal circumstances) to make Apple a ton of money. As was the case with iPhone, Apple was big enough to force the hand of the industry-controlling posse into accepting things on its own terms. While they eventually rolled out DRM free, this should be a basic expectation and does not qualify Apple for bonus points. For years they sold exclusively DRM'd content while there were others attempting to make it on DRM-free platforms.

And by the way, afaik (not an iTunes user), television and movie content is still provided exclusively in DRM'd formats.

[__david__]

> Most early music stores had no DRM.

Yeah, but they also had no music. Apple used their near monopoly of online music to force the majors into selling DRM free music online. That deserves praise.

[burgerbrain]

Amazon MP3 beat them to that.

"Launched in public beta on September 25, 2007,[1] in January 2008 it became the first music store to sell music without digital rights management (DRM) from the four major music labels (EMI, Universal, Warner Music, and Sony BMG), as well as many independents.[1][2][3][4]"

"On January 6, 2009, Apple announced that DRM had been removed from 80% of the entire music catalog in the U.S."

[epistasis]

The labels gave DRM-free music to Amazon first in an attempt to lessen iTunes dominance. Apple was publicly rabble-rousing for DRM-free music before that.

[cookiecaper]

I don't know if I really agree that a large company using its influence to strong-arm "partners" into accepting terms favorable to itself is really that praiseworthy. We are fortunate that in this case Apple's incentives aligned with those of its users -- DRM is a huge PITA for the company that runs the DRM infrastructure as well as a problem for the company's users.