Apple's music operation hits a sour note
It's not enough to denounce crime and lock up criminals, say the social scientists. We must consider the root causes of crime. Which brings us to Apple Computer Inc., which is encouraging people to steal digital music files, and undermining its own success to boot.
How's that? Apple's iTunes Music Store offered the first easy way to buy music legally over the Internet. Surely that has helped to discourage illegal file swapping. But there's a catch, as we saw last week when a rival music seller attempted to crash the iTunes party.
It took years for recording companies to agree to sell their music online, mainly because it was so easy for someone to buy one song, then make a million perfect copies of it, for free distribution to all comers. The music companies had a change of heart because engineers devised ways to wrap each music file in a digital ''envelope" to prevent the buyer from making copies, or even playing the file on someone else's computer. This anti-piracy technology is known as ''digital rights management," or DRM.
Apple Computer created a DRM system called FairPlay, thus assuring the music companies that songs sold through the iTunes store wouldn't turn up on some illegal file-swapping network. The recording firms embraced online sales, and iTunes became an international success.
But consumers paid a price. Songs purchased from iTunes can be played only on a limited number of computers, and on only one portable music player, Apple's iPod. Music lovers don't seem to mind, though. Apple has sold about 3 million iPods, making it the most popular such device on earth.
Any competing online music seller would love to get his songs onto some of those iPods, but that's not easy. Apple designed the iPod to work with its own FairPlay antipiracy technology, but nobody else's. And Apple hasn't shared FairPlay with its competitors. So rival music sellers were frozen out.Until last week.
RealNetworks Inc. practically invented music broadcasting over the Internet, and has followed Apple into the music-selling business with its RealPlayer Music Store. Last week, RealNetworks said it would soon offer music downloads that work on iTunes players. The company has found a way to make its antipiracy software compatible with Apple's. That means a RealPlayer customer can play his music on an Apple iPod. The technology is also compatible with Windows Media antipiracy software from Microsoft Corp.
Microsoft hasn't complained; neither have the many makers of Windows-compatible music players. Apparently they understand that RealNetworks has done them a favor. RealAudio customers now have an incentive to purchase these newly compatible music players. You might expect Apple to take the same attitude. You'd be wrong.
Apple has responded by threatening to sue RealNetworks under the federal Digital Millennium Copyright Act, an ill-conceived law intended to stop illegal hacking of computer systems. But Apple has also warned that future software upgrades to the iPod may well override the RealNetworks software and prevent RealPlayer music files from working.
Apple refused to comment further, leaving outsiders puzzled.
''If Apple wants to deprive people of the right to play music on their device, that's Apple's choice, and it speaks volumes about Apple's attitude toward its customers," said RealNetworks spokesman Matthew Graves. He acknowledged Apple could reprogram iPods to defeat the RealPlayer software, but added that RealPlayer could respond with its own modification to defeat Apple's.
Apple's legal threat is probably hollow; the copyright law allows companies to hack a rival's software to make a compatible product, so RealNetworks is probably in the clear. But Apple can rewrite its own software. In 1999, Microsoft Corp. modified its instant messaging program to make it compatible with its industry-leading rival, offered by America Online. In response, AOL changed its software to break Microsoft's. Back came Microsoft with still another hack into the AOL system, which was again countered by AOL, and so on. Microsoft eventually gave up, and AOL's dominance of instant messaging continues.
Don't be surprised if this saga ends the same way. Analyst Tim Bajarin of Creative Strategies Research Inc. has followed the career of Apple chief executive Steve Jobs for years. ''I'd be very surprised if he backed down on this issue," Bajarin said. He thinks Jobs is determined to maintain total control over the iPod, similar to Apple's absolute control of its Macintosh computer systems. For Jobs, said Bajarin, ''this is really a religious war."
It's also an incitement to steal music. Only honest music lovers have to worry as they buy from RealAudio or iTunes or the new, legal version of Napster, about which music players will play which songs. RealNetworks' new technology offers a way out: an all-purpose antipiracy system that will work with everybody else's, making it easy for consumers to stay on the right side of the law. But Apple's not having it, because Steve Jobs is a jealous god who will have no false technologies before him. As a result, the heretics will say the heck with it, log onto Kazaa or some other peer-to-peer file-swapping service, and steal music instead. Since his amazing comeback as Apple chief executive in 1997, Jobs hasn't made a single major mistake -- until now.
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.
