Disingenuous: Lacking in candor, or sincerity. Calculating.
Steve Jobs published a paper on his personal blog, you know Apple.com. Apple's DRM, FairPlay, has come under philosophical fire and legal troubles (banned in Norway recently, for locking in customers). With many industry heads speculating that DRM will be discontinued, it seems interestingly timely that Jobs publishes a paper saying if the Big Four record labels are willing to drop DRM, Apple would be happy to cooperate.
Jobs trots out a number game, concluding that each iPod owner purchases on average 22 tracks from the iTunes store and thus can hardly be locked in to Apple's way of life. Of course averages hardly matter for folks like me who own an iPod and don't purchase iTunes materials, and they don't capture the way Apple's ecosystem envelopes users and keeps them on the hook.
Now, this isn't strictly speaking because of some draconian DRM scheme; Apple's usability has been well chronicled, and if they get loyal customers because of it, they deserve it. However, some things cited in Jobs' essay ring false. He describes a clause on the record companies' ability to rescind their catalogue if FairPlay gets broken, and thus justifies Apple's reticence to license FairPlay to others. Why is this disingenous?

• FairPlay is broken. I won't list links, but like any DRM, there's a way around it.


• Record labels may screw over customers, but cutting off iTunes users seems like a PR gaffe on the level of Tom Cruis dropping the N-word on the Oprah show.


• Microsoft's PlaysForSure has been licensed out to many companies, and despite its occasional security issues, remains in use. It's safe to say that Apple holds a lot more clout than Microsoft's scheme which is in relatively scarce use.

So Steve, thanks for holding the price of tracks to 99 cents, which we know pisses the record labels off. Just don't try to pretend like you're at the forefront of the open format download revolution, when you run the most successful DRM-based music store on the planet.