John Gruber has, if not the definitive take, the most pointed look at Real’s attempts to leverage Apple’s music strategy for its own benefit.
Daring Fireball: Magic 8-Ball Answers Your Questions Regarding RealNetworks’ Harmony:
That makes no sense, and conveniently ignores the fact that the iPod supports non-protected songs ripped from any CD. Isn’t what he really means that it’s the market share for RealNetworks’ protected file format that will go down if it doesn’t work on the iPod?
YOU MAY RELY ON IT.
People forget that you don’t need the iTunes Music Store to use an iPod and you can quite easily enjoy one without ever becoming ensnared in any kind of DRM.
The Trouble with Tethering – Features – features.engadget.com:
What Apple doesn’t get is that the success of the iPod depends necessarily on the least tetherable music format: the MP3. If iPod users could not play home-brewed MP3s, they would have far too little music to justify those huge hard drives. The iPod is an MP3 player first, a portable hard drive second, and an iTunes player a distant third. Its flexibility and adaptability are essential traits.
It’s not clear to me that Apple doesn’t get this. If it was as clueless as that, it wouldn’t offer a selection of encoders, even going so far as to innovate a new one (their “lossless” format). There’s nothing explicitly requiring an iPod user to be tethered to any DRM system. They can even use iTunes as a cataloging and organizational tool, as well as networked jukebox. Still no loss of freedom due to DRM.
It seems some of these DRM opponents are tethered in their own way, to an ideology instead of reality.
An email I sent to the Interesting People mailing list, in response to this:
I don’t get this: an iPod can play unlocked files just fine, as well as ones licensed through the iTunes Music Store. Those, in turn, can be unlocked with freeware tools like hymn (formerly PlayFair). What Real offers is not more freedom, but another DRM scheme to deal with (unless I missed something in the announcement). Users have always been able to put files on their iPod, regardless of provenance. What happens if I put a bunch of Rhapsody-locked files on mine and Apple renders Real’s hack ineffective?
Consumers are still free to buy other players or put DRM-free files on their iPod: I don’t see where Real offers anything but a thinly disguised and self-serving ploy that actually offers less freedom.
<update> Well, I got two replies to this from IP readers.
you can play the files…
if you store a movie on your ipod you can’t play it on your ipod…
did you not get that?
Well, I can’t play movies on my iPod now, so I’m not sure what I’m missing.
the other was a bit more forceful: I looked up the name of the author and the first reference I found was in a thread where a reply of his garnered the epithet “jackass” and suggested he keep his smug one-liners to himself.
And I had to look up “fallacy of affirmation of the consequent” but still don’t understand it.
I’m sure a lot of people reading this are chuckling at the illogic;
how could Real offering a piece of free software limit freedom?Real is making it possible for consumers who buy locked content
from their store to play that content on their iPods; it’s really
that simple — and of course it’s self-serving, they want
more people to buy their content; they’re a corporation in business
to serve itself, just as Apple is. That iPods can play unlocked
content is a silly red herring, a fallacy of affirmation of the consequent.One can argue against the concept of DRM and selling locked content,
which does indeed “offer less freedom”, but that has nothing to do with
the bogus arguments you offer here.