Digital Restrictions Management
Jo: Moving on to some of the other things you've been involved in. Linux on Xbox. I think you were offering a $200,000 prize to anyone who could run Linux on an Xbox without any mod chips. Was that purely philanthropy, or was there any element of "Microsoft, we don't like you, we're gonna try and take your loss-making box and run what you don't want us to"?Michael: I don't think you can have any meaningful impact with that second strategy, with such a huge company. To me, it's all about DRM [digital rights management]. It's all about "are you going to control the hardware that you buy, yes or no?". To me, it was all about raising peoples' awareness. Today, you have an open PC architecture, on which you can install anything you want - any software, any hardware. I don't want the world to move to a place where people are locked into a closed PC architecture, where you're limited on which hardware you can install, you're limited on which software you can buy. Ultimately, if that happens, consumers are going to get screwed. They're going to end up paying a lot more and having a lot fewer choices.
Michael: So the whole reason for the Xbox and Linux was to highlight the risks of DRM, the Xbox is essentially a closed PC architecture.
Jo: There's no Linspire for Xbox though?
Michael: No, no there isn't.
Jo: Any plans on that?
Michael: I don't think so, no.
Jo: On the topic of DRM, do you think any of the major labels will allow their music out without fifteen layers of only-play-this-once DRM? Is MP3tunes ever going to have anyone on it I've heard of?
Michael: I think the irony is that they do ship pristine digital copies, they're just on a plastic disc, not on-line. They're called CDs.
Jo: They've got Cactus Data Shield, Key2Audio.
Michael: They've been trying to do that for about five years without any real success. So that's the irony of it - whilst they're putting out these perfect digital copies on CDs, they refuse to sell inferior digital copies on-line without DRM. I think the sentiment is changing. That's why I started MP3tunes, because I wanted to focus on MP3. I think, ultimately, consumers will have the most options if everybody uses MP3. I think you can expect within the next twelve months for MP3tunes to sell major record label content in MP3 format.
David: The question is, with iTunes, Apple say they're protecting all of the music industry's interests, but if you lend me a CD, my iTunes has one button I press to rip it.
Michael: Apple's playing it both ways. Compare how many iPods they've sold, and how many iTunes Music Store tracks they've sold. There are about ten million iPods, and 300 million iTunes tracks sold, so every iPod has thirty songs on it? Gimmie a break! People have way more than that. So they're getting it from their CDs, or from whatever source. So Apple are probably a bit disingenuous when they say "we're protecting the industry", but they're allowing people to move MP3 files around easily.
