apple

As Apple's Steve Jobs is announcing that they suddenly "want native third-party applications on the iPhone", something its users have been yearning to have ever since they started buying these phones (even if it meant hacking them), Steve justifies their prior resistance to this kind of openness by security threats. As he says, they are "trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once — provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc."

Now it is time consider what does "open" here really means and what exactly are these security threats he talks about stemming from. "Open" here does not mean "Open Source" and certainly not "Free Software". It means simply letting developers other than Apple write software for iPhone, be it proprietary or Freedomware, just the way Microsoft allows others to write third party software for Windows (which ends up boosting its perceived value quite a bit - no good third party applications equals a not very desirable operating system). Of course, just as Apple fears viruses on iPhone, Microsoft has been and continues to be ridden by them on Windows.

Famous for his reverse engineering, an author of the DeCSS content de-scrambling software "DVD Jon" is playing a slightly different tune now. Rather than working against DRM as he has been known to do, he is now apparently experimenting with the idea of using DRM to his and supposedly customers advantage. He has reverse engineered Apple FairPlay, a DRM technology which makes sure that only Apple's files can play on an iPod, and instead of offering it to the public as it was his usual practice before, he is offering to license it to would be Apple competitors so that they can make their files play on an iPod.

Sounds like a noble kind of business. Or does it? Alex Curtis from Public Knowledge apparently agrees. He believes it is good thing because it is a chance to open up more competition to iTunes. It would make it possible for people to order music not only from iTunes, but some other alternative stores to play on their iPods. However, I would hesitate to give it my blessing just yet. One thing that seems to be overlooked is the fact that this could actually help *increase* the popularity of iPods which is an Apple product and potentially even contribute to its monopoly over portable music players even if temporarily cutting the monopoly on iPod compatible music stores. Curtis suggested that what DVD Jon is doing is not illegal as others have done it under the reverse engineering / interoperability provisions of the DMCA. I have to be suspicious in that regard. As one commentator on gigaom put it; "If the Apple patent lawyers did their job right, they would have covered any and every reverse engineering angle.." There is no guarantee that Apple wont at least *try* to litigate against him or companies deploying his DRM and maybe even succeed. What would be the end result of that? An increased popularity of iPods and still not much competition in the field of iPod compatible music stores.