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Real Network, is Real Dumb

First, read John Gruber’s post about Real Network’s reverse-engineering the Fairplay Digital Rights Restriction Management (DRM) to play Real’s version of DRM. Then, follow along, or skip to the end.

OK, are you done reading that? And what comes to mind? Think about it, nothing yet? Let’s go and think about what happened between Apple and Real Networks:

1. Apple invents the iPod
2. Apple wanted to sell music online
3. Music industry equates mp3 with Satan
4. To sell music online, Apple encodes everything using FairPlay
5. FairPlay is a type of Fairplay Digital Rights Restriction Management (DRM)
6. This DRM has not been licenced outside of Apple
7. Real wants to get in on the online music craze
8. Real started an online download site, called Harmony
9. Harmony competes with iTunes
10. Harmony can’t play on the iPod
11. The iPod accounts for over 50% of the handheld market
12. Real wanted to licence FairPlay
13. Apple denied them
14. Real reverse engineered FairPlay
15. Apple is mad
16. Apple will surely change something in the next iTunes update, breaking Harmony compliance
17. Your Harmony filles will, once again, not be usable on the iPod

OK, so that is the rundown of events, but what does harmony do, and how would you use it?

Well, we don’t really know, but this is how it might work:

1. Buy some music off of Real Networks’ Harmony
2. Finish downloading music
3. Run it through Harmony on your computer
4. Harmony reads the Real Network DRM file
5. Harmony then recodes the file into FairPlay
6. Harmony moves it to the iPod
7. You can listen your music on the iPod

OK, so what is wrong with this? The consumer gets to buy music from both Real and iTunes, what could be the problem. Well, Real didn’t legally licence FairPlay, and the iPod can’t play Real Networks DRM-encoded file as mentioned above. And Real Networks is complaining about freedom this, freedom that for customers.

If you made it this far, you also might be wondering what the solution is. Should Apple licence FairPlay to Real? Should we just throw our hands up in despair? Apple probably won’t licence FairPlay because iTunes is a loss-leader for the iPod.

It is simple: Harmony should just convert the files to mp3. That’s right, all of this could be solved by Real Network converting and/or using the de facto industry standard of portable music, the mp3. Simple, huh?

But they won’t. Why?, you ask. Because their music industry masters are scared shitless about the letter (and one number) m.p.3. They want to make sure that the file isn’t released into some p2p network. But more important, they want control. It is trivial to buy the same exact CD at a store and rip it to mp3, and then release it. Often, movies and music are released online before the official release. This is called a 0-day release. What this is really about, is the music industry not trusting their customers, by putting weak DRM on the file. FairPlay has already been cracked. But to the casual use (most of them) FairPlay is A-Okay, because it is flexible enough for daily use, but stops naive users from copying the files.

This is the real crime about DRM: That it restricts even your Fair Use rights but it does nothing to restrict those who make their living making bootleg copies of CD’s.

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