The Digital Rights Management (DRM) system that Apple, has come under increasing fire by consumers who do not want to be tied to iTunes or an iPod, both market leaders.
However its CEO Steve Jobs has retaliated in an open letter, which explains that their hands are tied by record companies who license the music to them. This comes as a blow to those who shared the opinion of 3's Head Of Music, Graeme Slattery, at Music Ireland 06 that "Apple would open up their DRM as they'd start to lose sales without doing so".
Mr Jobs writes in a statement released yesterday: "When Apple [first] approached these companies to license their music to distribute legally over the Internet, they were extremely cautious and required Apple to protect their music from being illegally copied. A key provision of our agreements is that if our DRM system is compromised and their music becomes playable on unauthorized devices, we have only a small number of weeks to fix the problem or they can withdraw their entire music catalog from our iTunes store"
Because of these terms, sharing Apple's copy protection system (FairPlay) with other companies compromises their agreements with these labels.
He calls on record companies to ease the DRM restrictions, which "Apple would embrace in a heartbeat", pointing out that 20 billion songs are sold on CDs which have little or no copy protection system. The record industry is yet to respond.
Digital sales now account for 10% of all music sold, and is set to rise to 25% by 2010, especially in light of the new development of The Beatles' back catalogue now being available on iTunes.