Steve Ballmer believes that Apple shouldn't ship a music player like the iPod that can play non-DRM music. He says that in so doing, Apple has deployed a player whose dominant form is "stolen" material. Even though he's got MSFT customers living under his own roof who don't want to buy DRM products ("My 12-year-old at home doesn't want to hear that he can't put all the music that he wants in all of the places that he would like it," he joked.), he's committing Microsoft to continue its headlong rush to jump the shark by building DRM into more and more of its products.
Billing Microsoft as the good guys and Apple the villains of the piece – at least as far as corporate America, rather than users, is concerned, Ballmer said: "We've had DRM in Windows for years. The most common format of music on an iPod is 'stolen'."
"Part of the reason people steal music is money, but some of it is that the DRM stuff out there has not been that easy to use. We are going to continue to improve our DRM, to make it harder to crack, and easier, easier, easier, easier, to use," he said.
