As iPod DRM gets cracked, calls for interoperability grow louder

Stan Beer
Friday, 27 October 2006 15:11

Opinion and Analysis

There used to be a time when you would just walk into a music store, buy a CD and listen to it driving home on the CD player in the car and then play it again on your CD player at home. Oh that's right, you can still do this - a CD player is a CD player, irrespective of its brand. How come the same thing doesn't hold true for digital downloads and portable music players?

A lot of music listeners are continually asking the above question. They're asking why they're not free to visit any digital music store on the web, pay for a music download, then play it on any portable music player of their choice, including the most popular player in the world by far, the Apple iPod.

They know why they can't do this of course. Draconian laws allow companies like Apple and Microsoft to implement digital rights management (DRM) systems that restrict downloads from certain online stores to certain brands of music players.

Apple's DRM Fairplay restricts iTunes downloads to iPod. Microsoft already has one DRM called PlaysForSure, which is currently used by most of the other music players on the market. Incredibly, Microsoft will soon have two DRMs - PlaysForSure and a new one for its new music player Zune.

There are many people who have watched and secretly applauded the activities of the young Norwegian born hack artist Jon Johansen, aka DVD Jon, who has reversed engineered the iPod FairPlay DRM to allow interoperability between iPod and other music stores and iTunes and music players other than iPod. He may be just a hacker in the eyes of some, but the government of Jon's home country Norway believes that he's right as do the other Scandinavian countries and France.

Like other music player and online music store companies, Microsoft has watched Apple's rise and rise in the music player market space with iPod. Microsoft and others have come to the conclusion that the phenomenal success of the iPod is a consequence of the so-called walled garden that Apple has created that ties iTune and iPod together.