Jobs Unlikely to Push for Lift of Video DRM

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Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs may be pushing for music labels to lift copyright protection on digital music but he doesn't appear so eager to do the same for video content, despite his position as the largest shareholder in Walt Disney Co.

When asked during the EMI conference call about the potential of lifting DRM from video, Jobs said: "Video is pretty different from music right now because the video industry does not distribute 90 percent of their content DRM free. Never has. So I think they are in a pretty different situation and I wouldn't hold it to a parallel at all."

Jobs was referring to CSS (Content Scramble System), technology that comes on DVDs that prevents users from copying the videos. He is arguing that CSS makes the video market different than the music industry because music CDs don't come with copy protection. As a result, Jobs' argument has been that digital music should be sold in an equivalent manner as CDs-- without copy protection.

Anti-DRM activists and analysts don't buy that explanation.

The reason that Jobs can negotiate with the music industry and encourage announcements like the one with EMI is because the iTunes store represents about 10 percent of music sales in the U.S., said McQuivey, a principal analyst at Forrester Research. By contrast, the iTunes store has only recently begun selling video and the store has yet to prove itself as a money-maker for video content producers. That means that even if Jobs did want to push for DRM-free video, he wouldn't have the same negotiating position with the movie studios as he does with the music labels.