Apple's Copy-Protection Isn't Just Bad For Consumers, It's Bad For Business

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Apple's copy-protection technology makes media companies into its servants. Other copy-protection technologies, like Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, are just as bad, says Internet activist Cory Doctorow.

When it comes to anti-copying technology, there are two possible outcomes: either you have a popular single-vendor system that's bad for the industry and general public, or you have a multi-vendor system that's bad for the industry and general public.

Apple Computer's iTunes is hailed as the first really "balanced" copy-restriction system. Unlike the copy-restrictions built into failed systems from the likes of Sony, Toshiba, and Microsoft, the anti-copying/anti-use stuff in iTunes doesn't seem to have deterred the public from buying iTunes music and the iPods that play it. Indeed, more than a billion iTunes have been sold around the world. That only amounts to a couple CDs' worth of tracks on every iPod, but still, that's not bad, especially in a field where the big success stories to date have been digital music stores that managed to go out of business without costing their backers too much.

Steve Jobs and Apple managed to lure the music industry into licensing the copyrights for the iTunes Music Store even though the Store's use-restrictions are comparatively mild. There's a bit of region-coding -- you pay a per-download charge based on the country your credit-card is billed to. There's a bit of multi-use restriction -- only five CPUs can be registered to a given iTunes account at a time. There are some miscellaneous restrictions, including ones that are genuinely bizarre, like limiting the number of times you can burn a given playlist.

Removing iTunes's DRM is pretty straightforward. It's time-consuming, but it's not too difficult. You just have to burn a CD with the tracks, re-rip the CD tracks as MP3s, and re-enter the metadata, like title and artist. This doesn't work as well for the expensive audiobooks Apple sells, which generally come in chunks too large to fit on a CD.

So far, so good. The iPod is the number one music player in the world. iTunes is the number one digital music store in the world. Customers don't seem to care if there are restrictions on the media Steve Jobs sells them -- though you'd be hard pressed to find someone who values those restrictions. No Apple customer woke up this morning wishing for a way to do less with her music.

But there's one restriction that's so obvious it never gets mentioned. This restriction does a lot of harm to Apple's suppliers in the music industry.

That obvious restriction: No one but Apple is allowed to make players for iTunes Music Store songs, and no one but Apple can sell you proprietary file-format music that will play on the iPod.

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