Had CDs been encrypted, iPods would not have been able to read their content, because the content providers would have been able to use their DRM contracts as leverage to prevent it.
Moreover, the iPod most likely would have never been invented. How about that for killing innovation?
Ironically, iPod & iTunes were using DRM (FairPlay) on launch!
I don't think it's DRM itself killing innovation but the overuse of the actual "control over software and hardware providers".
What makes products like the iPod or Netflix successful, despite their use of DRMs, is their simplicity and accessibility among other things. Netflix is trying hard to negotiate for more content, but I think content providers are killing innovation mainly by not allowing initiatives like Netflix to have all the content in one place. We need a Spotify (i.e. most of the content available) for movies...
The iPod and iTunes existed, and were wildly popular, for years before the iTunes Music Store existed, so no, they weren't using DRM on launch. It's only because there was so much DRM-free media around that the iPod could become popular enough that selling music on iTunes was a vaguely interesting proposition; without that built-in market, the iTMS probably would never have been worthwhile.
And, to engage in some historical guesswork, if the iPod never happened, what would have happened to the iPhone and iPad? It's not that smartphones and tablets in some form never would have happened without the iPod, but it's hard for me to see Apple having a role.
The smartphone market got into gear with Palm (and Handspring, then Palm bought Handspring...) merging their PDAs with a cellphone.
If you don't recall PalmOS, the major user interface was a resistive touch screen (160x160 mono ranging up to 320x320 16K color) and a stylus, with no keyboard on most models. The keyboard lack was countered by a handwriting recognition system that took a very low-CPU power approach: Graffiti has its own gesture alphabet, which takes an hour or two to learn. By specifying the way every letter had to be drawn, and specifying where on the screen it would be recognized, a Motorola 68K was acceptable, and a 300MHz low-end ARM felt snappy.
PalmOS had a database format which lives on to this day as part of the Mobi ebook file spec.
It's likely that smartphones would have never escaped the enterprise (Blackberry, Palm, WinPho 6, etc.) if the iPhone hadn't been released. Apple always put music front and center in their presentation of the iPhone, for good reason.
I don't think so. I was starting to see Palm and Windows smartphones in the hands of consumers without especially advanced tech backgrounds a decade ago as well as the occasional Sidekick. Android was in development at the time as well, and while early prototypes don't seem nearly as consumer-friendly as iPhones, many early production models were similarly unimpressive.
It may have taken a bit longer, but I think the mainstream popularity of smartphones was inevitable.
>I think the mainstream popularity of smartphones was inevitable
I don't. I'm not a fan of Apple, but they really transformed our conception of a smartphone and made them a desirable device for the mass market. As I'm sure you know, early versions of Android looked nothing like it did once the iPhone was revealed. Even relatively modern smartphone platforms like WebOS completely failed to resonate with the public.
You're forgetting that Nokia (and a few others) managed to sell a few hundred million iPhone-uninfluenced Symbian devices before that platform was flattened by Android. That's plenty of evidence that the mass market already wanted smarter devices iPhone or no iPhone.
I dunno, all video content is DRM-encumbered, and yet I can choose from a whole range of media players that support all the formats commonly used for cracked "illegal" copies.
Sure, none of them are made by the mainstream brands that the entertainment industry has a hold over, but that was the same for MP3 players before Apple made its move. (And a bold move it was, because everybody knew the only thin iPods were being used for is to play "illegally" obtained content.)
Also, DRM is merely a weapon. Copyright is the killer.
I don't agree with the "DRM is merely a weapon" bit in your last paragraph.
DRM allows rights holders to create and "monetize" new "rights" outside the legislative process. Copyright law (in the United States, at least) allows for "fair use", but the DMCA criminalization of "circumvention devices" creates a method to eliminate fair use rights via technology. Once DRM is legally protected rights holders can go wild using DRM to, effectively, make up new laws.
I don't think anyone else has mentioned it yet but for me a very important corollary of what you mention about elimination of fair use rights [where's the punishment against this?] is the failure of works to enter the Public Domain.
A work with DRM attached can't be Copyrighted. Copyright is a bargain between the demos and the creators of artistic works. In that bargain the creators get protection from the state for their monopolistic exploitation of a work on the proviso that the work then enters the public domain after a "limited" time.
Now distribution companies and purchasers of copyrights and employers of copyright creators have managed to erode the limitation of that period to a great extent but the limitation still holds. Ergo, works must enter the Public Domain when the term expires.
Works with DRM can not [properly] do this. Not in any way as might analogise that imagined by those creating copyright laws initially. The work must be free to be used in any way the public sees fit (except perhaps those that contravene moral rights, I'd personally extend some moral rights in perpetuity - eg right to be acknowledged as creator of a work).
Copyright law should punish those that forcibly rest fair use (or fair dealing as we get in the UK) from the public and no protection should be offered by the state for works that can't be guaranteed to enter the public domain (eg by deposition of non-DRM in an archive to which the rights holder that chooses DRM pays a fee for maintenance).
Copyright law is a deal that has been broken. Too much power has been ceded by politicians to the media conglomerates on the public's behalf and without proper warrant.
Nearly every sentence of this post is factually wrong. A wide variety of DRM free video exists on the internet, some of it is even paid material. Louis CK, Jim Gaffigan and Greg Proops have all done DRM-free work.
My iPhone can play any video encoded in the right formats using the Videos app. It can also run VLC. A wide variety of main stream BluRay players support DLNA and media via usb.
Copyright being a killer kind of overlooks why we have copyright to begin with. I make movie, I get some limited powers to determine who can and can not distribute my work and how it's used. If I make a movie, you don't have the right to make a buck off my work with out my say so. Do you have ANY idea why that's kind of inherently unfair?
Also, if I don't want my work used to sell cigarettes or used to stump for some political candidate, then that should be my right.
That's not to say copyright reform isn't needed, or that copyright holders don't have disproportional bipartisan political influence or any number of things. However, as a leading issue of our time, it's somewhere near, "Are there too many Buicks on the road?" Fixing or repealing the DMCA is relatively easy. There are many issues that I can think of that just aren't.
Moreover, the iPod most likely would have never been invented. How about that for killing innovation?