Can't require phoning home

Posted Dec 23, 2005 21:18 UTC (Fri) by zblaxell (subscriber, #26385) [Link]

I think it would be more like "if you want to put more music on your iPod, you must plug your iPod into a computer." At that point it can require Internet connectivity to its DRM masters since the whole point of the exercise is to transfer data from the same DRM masters to the iPod. The user experience might be "sometimes when you put new music onto your iPod, it stops playing some of the old music any more."

Of course if someone writes a free version of the software on the PC that talks to the iPod, there's no way they can fail to notice that for some reason the wire protocol to the iPod involves bouncing blocks of unintelligible bits back and forth to some Internet site that nobody has ever heard of.

On the other hand, if Apple starts embedding iPod DRM directives into standard formats (e.g. MP3) as audio watermarks, then Apple still owns the iPod unless you are a guru of stenography countermeasures.

Of course this doesn't do anything useful if the only data you put into your iPod comes from clean sources (e.g. ripped from standard audio CD's or analog sources by unencumbered DRM-free software) with no network access, but at this point you're maintaining a firewall around the iPod--if you ever stop paying attention or loan your iPod to someone who does, your iPod could escape its confinement and update itself.