Steve Jobs on iPod and DRM
Welcome to Internal Tech Emails: internal tech industry emails that surface in public records. 🔍 If you haven’t signed up, join 50,000+ others and get the newsletter:
From: Brett Bullington
Date: Wed May 7, 2003 1:08:29 PM
To: Jon Rubinstein
Subject: I think you guys know this
But at some point, sooner than later, MusicMatch will offer a music download service.
From: Jon Rubinstein
Date: Wed May 7, 2003 6:24:11 PM
To: Phil Schiller, Steve Jobs
Subject: Fwd: I think you guys know this
We know this and shouldn't be surprised...
On Thursday, May 8, 2003, at 09:16 AM, Steve Jobs wrote:
Guys –
We need to make sure that when Music Match launches their download music store they cannot use iPod. Is this going to be an issue? Do they have the rights to use iPod with their own service?
Steve
On Thursday, May 8, 2003, at 09:29 AM, Philip Schiller wrote:
There is nothing in our agreement that denies them the right to put any class of content on an iPod.
But, since we don't know what they are doing it is possible that they have some DRM model and that it would take work on our part to support it on a device (I don't know). If so we can certainly decide not to do that work.
From: Steve Jobs
Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2003 9:34 AM
To: Philip Schiller
Cc: Jeff Robbin; Eddy Cue; Jon Rubinstein
Subject: Re: Music Match
Right – they will need a DRM in any portable device to satisfy the music companies, and we can simply deny any request to put their DRM in our iPod.
Steve
[This document is from The Apple iPod iTunes Antitrust Litigation (2014).]
Further reading from Brian X. Chen for The New York Times (December 16, 2014):
A jury took about three hours to reject an antitrust lawsuit — 10 years in the making — that accused Apple of using a software update to secure a monopoly over the digital music market. …
The lawsuit involved iPods sold from September 2006 to March 2009 that were able to play only songs sold in the iTunes Store or those downloaded from CDs — not music from some competing stores. Apple was accused of violating antitrust law by using a copyright management system to lock people into buying iPods rather than cheaper alternatives.
Previously: Microsoft execs on Apple’s music store: “We were smoked” (April 30, 2003)
Previously: Bill Gates on the iPod (November 2, 2003)
Previously: Steve Jobs on iPhone design (October 5, 2005)
If you upgrade to a paid subscription, you’ll receive access to the full archive of internal tech emails, with 200+ documents from Apple, Google, Meta, Tesla, and more. You’ll also support our work: every year, we track hundreds of court cases and review more than 10,000 filings to bring you @TechEmails.
Facebook exec: "This might be the biggest threat we've ever faced as a company"
From: Sheryl Sandberg
Date: Sunday, October 7, 2012 2:15 PM
Subject: offsite topics
We got very few ideas from anyone. We need to do an agenda tomorrow — so if anyone has anything you want to cover, please send to me and [REDACTED] before tomorrow 9:00 AM.
From: Dan Rose
Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2012 11:27 AM
Subject: Re: offsite topics
Importance: High
I think we should talk about the competitive threat from WhatsApp, KakaoTalk, Line, etc. This might be the biggest threat we’ve ever faced as a company.
[This document is from FTC v. Meta (2024).]
Previously: Mark Zuckerberg emails WhatsApp cofounder: “Rumor” (April 6, 2013)
Previously: Mark Zuckerberg on strategy for Messenger (December 9, 2013)
Thanks for reading!
-Internal Tech Emails