iTunes, iPod, DRM, and the VirginMesa case
Here is an interesting presentation by Nicolas Petit on the VirginMesa case. Virgin claimed that Apple was abusing a dominant position by refusing to license its FairPlay technology to Virgin. Apple is vertically integrated with the iTunes store upstream and the iPod downstream. The two are connected via FairPlay DRM. Virgin is present only at the upstream level and complains that without a FairPlay license its customers cannot play Virgin music files on their iPods. That claim, of course, is almost comical, and the French Competition Council rightly dismissed it. The reason that Virgin’s files don’t play on the iPod is that Virgin’s DRM is incompatible with the iPod, not that the iPod uses FairPlay to tether songs purchased from the iTunes music store to the iPod. The iTunes store-iPod integration is by no means airtight, if anything, it is “one way,” in the sense that (most) iTunes store files only play on iPods, not “two way,” in the sense that iPods only play iTunes music store files. And even the one-way integration is rather loose. Any iTunes file can (in descending order of legality and ascending order of convenience) be burnt to CD, audio ripped, or stripped of DRM entirely. No one keeps Virgin from selling music in mp3 format, which plays just fine on the iPod. And, hey, it’s good karma, too.
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November 5th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
“No one keeps Virgin from selling music in mp3 format […]”
Except for the music industry, which won’t allow their tracks to be sold without some form of digital rights management. And the only commercially available digital rights management available for people wishing to sell music is from Microsoft.