When I was a kid, I learned a valuable lesson from my friends'
ultimately futile attempts to teach me to play touch football.
Don't watch your opponent's upper body, they'd say.
They
can fool you, acting like they're heading one way when they're really
going to move in the opposite direction.
Although it didn't help my football playing, there's something
important and useful there. Don't be fooled by someone's arguments,
it might be translated. Pay attention to the point of view they are
espousing; that'll tell you what matters to them. You won't know why,
since their best arguments are rarely the ones that speak to their
real motives. But at least you'll know the outcome they want. Or the
one they fear.
Case in point is the recent hoohah about the French government's
effort to force makers of DRM'd music to make it work on every
player. Apple was particularly vocal in hating this idea. And
various people, including Dave Hamilton at The Mac Observer's podcast,
yelled that they were being hypocritical. Apple was insisting that
they didn't want to use DRM, that the labels were forcing it as a cost
of doing business. So if the French were going to make everybody play
nice, why should Apple object. Unless they really like DRM.
Unless they enjoy being the monopolist over the iPod and the iTunes
store. Shame, shame.
Which may be the truth. But, being the contrarian kind of guy I am,
I'd like to consider other motives. And the more I think about the
French law, the worse it sounds. Because from everything I've heard,
it's an attempt to legislate an outcome, not a process. It's like
trying to outlaw racism. Fine idea, but how do you make attitudes
illegal. Heck, how do you know that that's the problem in some
particular case?
So let's consider the French. They insist that music bought from one
source (like the iTMS) has to be playable on every device. But what
they don't say is who is responsible for making sure that works. Is
it the source of the music (e.g. Apple)? Or is it the maker of the
device? If the former, do they have to license every single DRM
scheme used by every device on the planet? If the latter, do they?
Or does the government expect everybody to get together and pick one
winner that everyone uses?
My guess is that that's the outcome Apple fears. Because if the
industry picks one DRM scheme, I'd be willing to bet that a vote would
choose Microsoft's. And Microsoft is very good at using their
leverage. I can just hear that conversation now: "Of course we'll
be happy to license our DRM to you, Apple. No problem at all. Of
course, you will have to kill the iPod. And the iTMS. And here's
what else we want..."
I may mention that I was on the receiving end of just such a
conversation with Microsoft a few years back. I was at Borland, part
of the marketing team for their C++ development product. Borland had
a programming library called OWL (Object Windows Library) that
competed, all too well, in Microsoft's view, with their own MFC
(Microsoft Foundation Classes). Microsoft put a lot of effort into
getting everyone to use their library, to the point of licensing it to
every other tool maker. Borland wanted to offer it as well, since
Microsoft's marketing was working with some important customers.
Microsoft was happy to let Borland have it too. But only if they
first agreed to kill their competing product. (If you doubt this
story, I can tell you that I had emails from the responsible
individuals at Microsoft stating exactly what I've described here.)
My point is that Microsoft plays hardball. (And so would Sony and
Creative and Real and everybody else, given the chance.) If I were
Apple, I would be deeply concerned about doing anything that plays too
far into Microsoft's hands, especially in a product area that's so
important to the bottom line. But I wouldn't want to have to explain
exactly why I'm so opposed; it might make me sound paranoid for one
example. Then again, wasn't it Intel's former CEO who said that only
the paranoid survive?
Seems to me he spent a lot of time dealing with Microsoft. I'm just
saying.
Disorderly Content
My last post told of the arrival of the display I'd ordered for my new
Mac Mini. The computer itself arrived yesterday. Which meant that
from that moment to this, I've been transferring files and
reconfiguring and remembering passwords and the like. Of course,
first I had to rip out the old computer. Well, not so much the
computer as all the junk that was connected to it, and all the power
supplies and USB cables for all that junk. It's amazing how many
devices I needed then and how few I have now. Granted, part of that
is stuff that no longer works, some of which I'd disposed of long
ago. But the cables and in some cases the power bricks remain. But
no longer! There are actual square inches of visible desk space
around my computer and monitor.
