Macrovision Chief Responds to Jobs

Macrovision President’s Open Letter to Steve Jobs Concerning Digital Rights Management

February 2007 By Brian Ploskina

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When Steve Jobs published an open letter calling for the abolishment of digital rights management, he wasn’t attacking the music companies. He was attacking software companies like Macrovision, which depend on revenues from DRM-enabled media to survive.

So when it came time to respond to Jobs’ call to action, it was Fred Amoroso, CEO and president of Macrovision Corp., striking back. And strike back, he did.

In a letter published this morning on Macrovision’s Web site, Amoroso takes two import digs at Apple and its reticent feelings about DRM.

First, Amoroso says the problem isn’t DRM, but the closed DRM system, called FairPlay, which Apple is criticized for limiting to iTunes and the iPod. “Truly interoperable DRM will hasten the shift to the electronic distribution of content and make it easier for consumers to manage and share content in the home,” he writes. “And it will enable it in an open environment where their content is portable across a number of devices, not held hostage to just one company’s products.”

Jobs had previously said this closed system was necessary for keeping with Apple’s deal with the music companies to protect the content from piracy. The closed system allows the company to clamp down quickly when a breach is discovered in the software.

Amoroso addresses this concern, saying Macrovision “would also assume responsibility for FairPlay as a part of our evolving DRM offering and enable it to interoperate across other DRMs, thus increasing consumer choice and driving commonality across devices.”

The second point of Amoroso’s letter is to position DRM not as a technology that limits consumption, but expands it, because the media companies publish content in more ways when they trust that it’s protected, thus expanding consumer choice.

In fact, Amoroso says, “consumer equipment manufacturers are introducing advancements in wireless connectivity and the interoperability of devices that are opening the door to new ways for consumers to acquire and view content from many sources,” obviously referring to new media players from SanDisk, iRiver and the Microsoft Zune.