Net Results:DRM - digital rights management - is one of the more frustrating and unwanted controls thrust upon the consumer in an increasingly digitised entertainment world, writes Karlin Lillington

A DRM systems is basically an electronic lock imposed on a form of entertainment - a DVD, a downloaded film, a piece of music sold online, an image on the internet. The lock prevents the item from being played on certain machines, or from being distributed freely online. Theoretically, that is.

One of DRM's problems has been that people, rightly or wrongly, tend to figure out ways around it.

Another of DRM's problems is that it imposes entirely new restrictions on what people can do with the things they buy, simply because they are in a digital format.

Lots of people say that DRM is therefore unfair.

Why should a digital download of a song have numerous limitations built into my ability to enjoy it - for example, to listen to it on both my computer and my iPod or Zen music players - when the CD I own allows me not only to "rip" (transfer) the entire CD on to my computer, but then put those songs on to another CD I create of my favourite songs, or transfer the song to either of my music players?

I don't call this unfair. I call it short-sighted and stupid. (By the way, it's even more stupid here in Ireland, where it is technically illegal even to have an iPod, as music in this country is licensed in such a way that it cannot legally be copied to such a device. Thank the Irish Recorded Music Association for that.)

I do understand the frustration that artists who create music or video may have with internet users passing their work around freely.

Yet, if this issue is so crucial, why allow record labels to release songs on CD, where they are far more easily distributed with no protection at all?

Last week, Apple Inc co-founder and chief executive Steve Jobs posted a challenging and insightful essay on just this topic to the Apple website.

Anyone remotely interested in music, computers, DRM and music players needs to read it, as it lays out a number of important points about why this system works so poorly right now, and why it limits sales of music rather than protecting revenue streams.

You can read it here: http://www.apple.com/hotnews/ thoughtsonmusic/.

Jobs of course has a vested interest in arguing - as he does here - that the recording labels should just dump the notion of DRM.

To his credit, he was the first to somehow wrestle a number of the giant labels into allowing Apple to sell their catalogues, hence the birth of the iTunes Music Store, the single most successful venue for the sale of digital downloads on the net.

But many have criticised Apple for itself imposing DRM on music buyers - its songs only play on iPods or devices that use the AAC music encoding format and also come wrapped in a DRM layer that limits the devices the songs can be played on. Granted, Apple did negotiate a fairly broad interpretation of DRM, but it is still there.

Jobs's argument is that DRM is riddled with problems, and as long as the labels insist on it, sales of digital music will be stunted.

He also points out the illogicality of the system - after all, the music labels sell as much music on totally unprotected CDs annually as they do digital downloads. So why insist on protection in one area when anyone can transfer that unprotected CD on to a computer?

Jobs and iTunes have proven already that there's a huge and ready market for legal, paid-for music, if that music is provided in a way the punters want it. One could even argue that such a system is successful, despite a number of restrictions with iTunes.

Imagine the sales if the DRM was abandoned? Many of the smaller labels don't bother with it and there are still plenty of buyers, as eMusic among others has proven.

So why the Jobs essay now? Well, one guess is that Apple has hit a wall in persuading the labels to loosen up at a point when the company would like to expand its stores further.

There are also some immediate PR aims - Apple is often accused of tying people who buy iPods into their proprietary store and AAC format, but Jobs is quick to point out that an iPod can play MP3s and that the vast majority - 97 per cent - of the music on the average iPod is not purchased at the iTunes store and hence has no restrictions on it either way.

He also takes a dig at Europe - because the European Commission has been worked up about Apple's DRM and AAC format.

Jobs rather cheekily notes that the biggest label in the world is Universal, owned by French group Vivendi - and guess which national legislature actually made the iPod, iTunes, AAC and DRM an issue? Yes, France.

Then there's EMI (British) and Sony (50 per cent German-owned, by Bertelsmann).

Jobs says that if the labels would drop their requirement that Apple impose DRM, the problem would be resolved (not the AAC bit, of course, which annoys many).

Will the labels listen? One is tempted to predict "no", but Jobs worked a semi-miracle in getting several of the big ones to sell their songs at iTunes in the jittery post-Napster era in the first place. So who knows?