Wow. Steve Jobs just posted an article, written by him, on Apple’s site basically calling for an end to DRM, the security system bound to most legally purchased digital music over the Internet.

Obviously this is huge coming from Jobs who happens to run by far the biggest digital music store in the world, iTunes. For the market leader to more-or-less come out against the status quo is pretty impressive.

No doubt Steve Jobs has his own reasons for the statement; as the last paragraph hints at, this is basically his reponse to the ruling in Norway last week that iTunes was operating illegally. Jobs wanted to make it clear: he is not the one behind the DRM, it’s the record companies.

Not pulling any punches, he goes on to basically call the big four record companies idiots for holding on to the thought that the DRM is keeping them safe from pirates…when over 90% of the music they sell is sold completely unprotected (on CDs). I love it, the record companies must be so pissed!

The question is, will this change anything? That’s pretty unlikely, at least in the near-term. Though there is a huge anti-DRM sentiment that seems to be spreading everyday around the Internet, until the music companies start seeing those online sales going downward, I’m sure they’re perfectly happy to keep the DRM intact.

Bill Gates also came out against DRM about a month and a half ago, but his position is a little less straight-forward. While Steve Jobs makes it clear: if the record companies would let us, we’d sell non-DRM’d music in a second; Gates just states that the current state of DRM is broken and needs to be fixed. The fix is simple, Jobs has it right: get rid of it.

Some other takes: Webomatica | Deep Jive Interests | Thomas Hawk’s DC