Apple’s Fairplay Takes A Drubbing in the Press Today

There’s a lot of criticism of Apple’s copy-protection scheme, Fairplay, in the news today.

Tidbits Adam Engst describes the headaches he encountered trying to make an audio book, which had been split into four chunks, into one easy-to-use file — a perfectly legal and reasonable thing to do.

Newsweek columnist Steven Levy chastises Apple for refusing to license Fairplay and allow consumers to play iTunes songs on other devices.

Ex-Wired News columnist Adam Penenberg, now writing for Slate, wraps it up with a cogent explanantion of why we, the consumers, have to put up with limiting copy-protection schemes. It has little to do with protecting content, and everything to do with protecting business models:

While Apple stands alone and Sony self-destructs, Microsoft is practically giving away its digital-rights-management tool in an effort to pick up market share against Apple (so far with little success). We may even see a replay of the Apple-Microsoft battle over the desktop, which ended with Apple holding on to a tiny sliver of the computer market. There is, however, a big difference between then and now. Steve Jobs has a hefty market share and a massive content library made up of millions of songs at a price that people like. As long as the record companies license their content to Apple and consumers flock to the iPod, Apple is in a powerful — some might say Gatesian — position.

What’s hardest for the consumer to swallow, then, is that anti-piracy schemes like DRM look like the subtle tactic of the monopolist. Neither Apple nor Microsoft is hurt by music piracy. Instead, they use it as a marketing ploy to force people to use their products. It doesn’t have to be this way. The companies could agree on one standard that allows people to play the music they lawfully purchase on whichever player they choose. The music industry is supposed to sell music, not the medium it comes in, right?