Jon Lech Johansen, or better known as DVD Jon for cracking CSS encryption, posted a response to Steve Jobs' open letter about DRM. As one who clearly stands against the restrictions placed upon media by corporations, it may be surprising for some to learn that Johansen isn't buying Jobs' preach. One of Johansen's immediate criticisms are what he believes to be Jobs' use of misleading statistics. Jobs said in his letter that customers purchased a total of 90 million iPods and 2 billion songs from the iTunes store, which he equated to 22 songs purchased for each iPod ever sold. Johansen points out that the stats are misleading because not all of those 90 million iPods are in use, and that some of them may not even be operational.:

Yes, hard to believe, until you realize that Steve is using misleading statistics. There may be 90 million iPods sold, but not all of them are currently in use. Furthermore, it's the number of iTunes Store customers and average sales per customer that's relevant, and Apple has never disclosed these figures. Many iPod owners have never bought anything from the iTunes Store. Some have bought hundreds of songs. Some have bought thousands. At the 2004 Macworld Expo, Steve revealed that one customer had bought $29,500 worth of music.

If you've only bought 10 songs, the lock-in is obviously not very strong. However, if you've bought 100 songs ($99), 10 TV-shows ($19.90) and 5 movies ($49.95), you'll think twice about upgrading to a non-Apple portable player or set-top box. In effect, it's the customers who would be the most valuable to an Apple competitor that get locked in. The kind of customers who would spend $300 on a set-top box.