Apple has a newfound sense of corporate responsibility, is what we’re meant to believe from Steve’s Thoughts on Music. Punditry ensues: everyone is talking about it, BusinessWeek wants to open up FairPlay (didn’t Steve already ding that idea?), and a venture capitalist thinks Apple should sell MP3s direct via Web. Glyph even thinks this is reason enough to buy a MacBook (though I’d still prefer a Thinkpad).

Mac Observer put together a good summary podcast, but Gizmodo hits the nail on the head: this is just another example of Apple’s notoriously good PR. While DRM might still be struggling to evolve past its status as “fringe conversation” in the United States legislature, it’s a major legal issue in places like France and Norway. Apple is not just starting a conversation in the US; it is taking a swing at those in European parliaments (and record companies) who want to force it into opening FairPlay technology.

You can pick up bits and pieces of the RIAA response, and a couple notable articles (like this one in the Washington Post), but nothing on their own web site. This smells a little like the ostrich strategy: put your head in the sand, pretend it’s not there, and wait. And they might as well.

By now, the recording industry must recognize, at least internally, that DRM is a failure; it has incurred tremendous cost and hasn’t stemmed the tide of piracy at all, and public opinion is starting to come around to that. The more they pressure Congress to enact ridiculous legislature (write to stop the PERFORM Act, by the way), the more unpopular they’ll become.

In the end, I think Steve Jobs is being slightly disingenuous, because what he’s proposing isn’t necessarily a winning strategy for Apple — and he’s clearly not going to take steps until the record labels do.

The question of lock-in doesn’t go away just because the labels say so. I can go to Bleep, a Warp Records site, and buy unencumbered MP3s of Bloc Party or The Earlies. But if I get them from iTunes, they come with FairPlay protection anyways; that tells me Apple is using DRM even in cases where it doesn’t have to. There could be technical reasons (lazy programmers), but that sounds a little too convenient.

If Apple wants to get rid of DRM, they should start selling MP3s when they can, and the iTunes Store should make it clear when you’re buying DRM content. That pressures labels to stop chasing the DRM pipe dream and takes away a central argument of Apple’s competitors: that the iTunes Store is locking customers into a particular hardware platform.

Since Apple’s profits come primarily from iPod sales, not from the iTunes Store, removing DRM would likely increase Apple’s financial risk. So while Apple may still win in a digital marketplace unencumbered by DRM, as long as the labels insist on having it, Apple is clearly going to take advantage of that by using its flavor of DRM to boost hardware sales.

All the while, indie artists continue to get screwed. There are plenty of indie labels that would love to sell DRM-free music online, and I don’t see them in the iTunes Store. TuneCore is a welcome step forward, but I don’t see it getting the publicity it deserves. That tells me Apple is still keeping its eye on the large recording companies; while the fight against DRM is important, it is closely allied with the fight against cultural cartels like the RIAA and MPAA. Apple only seems interested in solving one half of the problem.

Steve Jobs’s words may make sense, and even strike a chord with technopolitgeeks like myself, but this is a calculated PR strike against other large corporate entities, not a rallying cry for altruism in the content industry.