iTunes and Playfair

A couple of weeks ago, Slashdot mentioned Playfair, an application that enables you to crack music files bought from the iTunes music store (still not availabe in Canada, I might add). Essentially these files have digital rights management (DRM) associated with them that restrict how you can use them. In truth, Apple’s DRM is better than anybody else’s, but a polite taxman is still a taxman, so to speak.

After some legal posturing, Playfair was offshored (ah, the irony) to India, where Apple’s lawyers continue to hound it. Discussions are ongoing on Slashdot, and I added the following brief to the noise, arguing against buying music from Apple:

Let me quote Cory Doctorow here, who is fond of saying:

No consumer ever woke up in the morning and said “you know, I want to do less with my music today”.

For me, it’s the principle of the thing. If you look at the last hundred and fifty years of technological development, copyright regularly gets broken. It’s happened again with peer-to-peer file sharing networks.

DRM represents and maintains the status quo. Artists still get shafted while studios make more profit and we get less control over the music we ‘own’. Furthermore, it endorses instead of punishing an industry that refuses, again and again, to embrace technological change. Alternatives like voluntary collective licensing of music file sharing offer a way forward.

In my view, buying from the iTunes store is a tacit approval of the music industry and its appalling treatment of its consumers over the past five years. Me, I’m waiting for a paradigm shift.