BusinessWeek on Opening Apple's iTunes DRM

hype7 writes "BusinessWeek is running a very interesting story on Apple's foray into music, with a different bent to everyone else's. BW suggests that, instead of opening the iPod up to the world, Apple should instead license its DRM - 'Fairplay' - to anyone who wants to start up a music store. The upside is obvious: it would mean that Apple's music format, AAC, would become ubiquitous; Apple could quite feasibly make money on licensing fees (say 1 cent per song sold); and, it would just happen to stick it to Microsoft and the Windows Media Format. As the iTunes Music Store isn't running at a profit (or forecast to make a big one), having the Music Store clones eat into Apple's existing market share wouldn't be a problem; all these stores would be doing is building a bigger potential market for the iPod."

Comments

AAC

[daeley]

For the nth time, AAC is not "Apple's DRM technology." It is part of the MPEG-4 specifications. More info here.. To quote:

AAC was developed by the MPEG group that includes Dolby, Fraunhofer (FhG), AT&T, Sony, and Nokia--companies that have also been involved in the development of audio codecs such as MP3 and AC3 (also known as Dolby Digital). The AAC codec in QuickTime 6 builds upon new, state-of-the art signal processing technology from Dolby Laboratories and brings true variable bit rate (VBR) audio encoding to QuickTime.

Re: Apple DRM?

[One Louder]

Consider yourself corrected - AAC is not proprietary and is part of the MPEG-4 specification. Apple's DRM wrapper for AAC, called "Fairplay", however, *is* proprietary.

On the other hand, Microsoft's WMA is proprietary no matter how you slice it.

RTFA

[Ogrez]

It doesnt say that AAC is Apples DRM.. it says that Apples DRM is called 'Fairplay' and licensing that to others would increase usage of the AAC FORMAT.

Re:RTFA

[cOle2]

FairPlay is actually owned by Veridisc so it may not be up to Apple to choose who to licence it to (if at all).

http://64.244.235.240/explained_contentprovider.as p

Re:RTFA

[farzadb82]

Umm... hate to burst your bubble but VeriDisc's Fairplay is not related in anyway to Apple's Fairplay (see)

Re:If apple want's to win with AAC they have to ..

[One Louder]

That's not Apple's decision to make, since they aren't the owners of AAC. And they're apparently smart enough at least to know that, unlike, say, you.

Re:It would be nice, but

[wankledot]

The iPod doesn't "have DRM" any more than your Dell thing does. It's capable of playing DRM'd tracks from the Apple music store, but you don't have to buy those to use the iPod.

You're a little defensive about your manliness there buddy, I don't have to choose a certain electronics device to reassure myself that people will think I'm straight.

Re:Unfortunately, Apple is too bullheaded...

[worm eater]

Having clones to Apple hardware is one thing and I can understand Steve killing that idea but this is so totally different. Steve readily admits that iTMS is not a breadwinner. But Steve is a just a bit too protective still to license FairPlay.

...but they already did license the hardware for the iPod to HP. Seems like it would be a lot easier to license out the DRM tech than the precious iPod.

Re:So...

[One Louder]

An online store that wants to sell to iPod users merely has to provide the music in MP3 or unprotected AAC, since the iPod will accept both of those as well as Fairplay-protected AAC. You'd probably have to provide your own client to buy the music, and then use the scripting interface for iTunes to load it onto the iPod.

Re:Apple's DRM

[jcain]

If you send an email to iTunes Support, and ask them nicely, they will de-authorize all the computers on your account automatically. Just tell them you no longer have the computers you authorized and cannot de-authorize them the normal way.

Worked for me.

Re:Unfortunately, Apple is too bullheaded...

[awtbfb]

But Steve is a just a bit too protective still to license FairPlay.

There is precedent for Apple successfully licensing something of this nature: Firewire.

Or... You Could Just Get The Non-DRM MP3s

[meehawl]

All hail FatWallet:

Here are some legal (in Russia!) MP3 download sites - most flat fee:

allofmp3.com
This site is locally legit and songs can be downloaded for as little as $0.01 per MB. That's around 3 cents per song.

DELit
Unusual emphasis on hard rock and metal acts (east European and Russian youth apparently worship metal acts)

3MP3.ru
$4.55 per month for unlimited downloads.

And you are not stuck with the typical iTMS low-quality 128Kbit file. Most of the Russian sites let you choose your quality and give you the option to do "online encoding" where you can select the settings you want. When the pop up screen shows up you can hit switch to advanced mode toward the bottm and you get the following options:

You can choose between the LAME or BLADE codec and 128, 160, 192, 256, and 320 kbps for each (constant bitrate). Or you can choose LAME variable bitrate at 128, 160, 192, or 256.

If you enjoy these services, 3MP3 should be your first stop to see if you can find what you are looking for at the lowest price. Then I'd move to allofmp3, followed by clubmp3.ru, and then DELit.

Cue the "In SOVIET RUSSIA" trolls now...

Re:Or... You Could Just Get The Non-DRM MP3s

[cpt kangarooski]

Of course there is a problem in that legal in Russia doesn't necessarily mean that it's legal for Americans in America to use those. In fact, it pretty likely isn't legal here, because all claims to the contrary, 17 USC 602 probably doesn't apply at all.

Favortie quote from the article...

[microcars]

It seems obvious that Glaser has never actually used an iPod.
Otherwise he never would have said this:

"The only way to presently put songs on an iPod is to (buy) them from iTunes," Glaser said, ...."

Re:it doesn't matter

[nsayer]

AAC is suuposedly not a lossy format

Um, no. AAC is a lossy format. If you burn it to CD, then rip it and re-AAC it, you get something not quite as good as the original.

AAC, FairPlay, and Apple

[maggard]

OK, cutting through the assumptions already posted, and folks who couldn't be bothered to actually read the article before posting...

• Yes, Apple's music files are encoded in AAC.
• Yes, AAC is an open standard, in that it is publically documented (for a reproduction fee to ISO), just not a free one, patent-wise or royalty-wise.
• Apple's AAC files are then protected with DRM using Apple's FairPlay (if this FairPlay is related to VeriDisc's FairPlay is unknown, Apple lists FairPlay under their Apple's copyright).
• If folks had bothered to read the article the DRM opportunity is pretty much what it was about, not the AAC format. FWIW FairPlay could be applied to mp3's too.
• As DRM goes FairPlay is pretty liberal and there have been few problems (Cory Doctorow's consistantly forgetting to un-license machines aside)
• Can FairPlay be broken? Probably, there are ways at getting to the AAC files via Apple's freely distributed QuickTime architecture (this is what iTunes uses).
• There's also the trivial exercise of using iTunes to burn a CD then re-ripping the music. Of course the music has then been lossily encoded twice, with different encoders, so it's sorta like listening to a copy of a tape of a FM broadcast.
• Ultimately though at US$1 a song & US$10/album most folks appear willing to own the music legitimately. Furthermore Apple has made it absurdly simple to share music locally via their iTunes software so most dorm & office style needs are handled that way.
• Of course, the article pretty much ignores if Apple wants to be in the Music or IP licensing business at all. They only gave MS their previous Apple-IP license when their mutual lawsuits seemed deadlocked for eternity. The Mac licensing program cannibalized their own sales before it was killed off, their FireWire licensing plan shot itself in the foot, there doesn't even seem to be much co-branding like used to happen with special speakers and such for Macs. These days Apple seems pretty intent on only doing things that directly support selling, or at least evangelizing, Mac hardware.

Re: Apple DRM?

[frankie]

Apple FairPlay -- can't licence from anyone.

Nope. How about you let me handle this:

• AAC: codec for mp4 audio (m4a) -- license from MPEG-LA
• WMA: audio wrapper format -- license from Microsoft
• WMRM: DRM used by WMA et al -- license from Microsoft
• FairPlay: DRM used by ITMS (m4p) -- license from Veridisc

Note1: as you can see, Alex Salkelver at Business Week clearly didn't do his homework before writing that article.

Note2: the folks at Veridisc are astonishingly incompetent at e-business: they own neither veridisc.com (unrenewed, squatted, not work-safe) nor fairplay.com (unowned, parked)