CNET's Charles Cooper Strikes Out in iPod Attack

There’s a common misconception about what it means to be proprietary. Here’s a disassembly of one of the worst articles yet on the subject, written by CNET's executive editor, Charles Cooper.

Proprietary: You keep using that word.

In the Princess Bride, Vizzini repeatedly describes everything that happens as "inconceivable!" Fed up, Inigo Montoya finally tells him, "You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means!"

Tech analysts similarly repeat words they don't really understand: one example is proprietary. The analyst this time around is CNET's executive editor, Charles Cooper. Here’s where he went wrong.

Proprietary refers to something that belongs to, and is controlled by, an owner or proprietor. In the tech world, the adoption of a technology can be accelerated by giving up ownership of it in order to create an open standard others can freely use; essentially, creating an open source idea.

Open Standards

The EU defines an open standard as a published specification available to anyone at little or no cost, offered non-revokably as royalty free technology, and without constraints on reuse. Some examples of entirely free and open standards:

•PDF is a subset of Adobe's proprietary PostScript. Adobe relinquished control of PDF, which allowed Apple to build Quartz upon it without paying Adobe licensing fees, and open source developers to create free PDF utilities.
•HTML is an international specification managed by the W3C. Nobody has to pay anyone to use it.
•SVG for vector graphics, and PNG for bitmap graphics, are both free and open media standards anyone can use.

Open standards have obvious benefits: interoperability, technology adoption, and decentralized control. There isn't always a clear line between an open standard and a proprietary one; it's easy to recognize extremes, but there are many standards that sit somewhere in the middle.

Industry standards maintained by an organization are not considered proprietary. They are available for anyone to use, usually at minimal cost, and with little restriction on use. How much control or cost is involved can vary, and that can generate controversy. Some international standards that are open, but involve licensing fees or royalties:

•Media file formats such as JPEG graphics, MPEG video and the associated MP3 and AAC audio formats.
•Hardware formats such as PCI, USB, and Firewire.

The Proprietary Garden of Good and Evil

A proprietary standard may be openly available to use, but it falls under the ownership and control of a non-neutral party. That owner usually demands significant fees from others wanting to use their standard, as well as restrictions on how it the technology can be used.

Some proprietary technologies enforce minimum standards in a way that benefits consumers. For example, Phillips CD Audio is a proprietary standard, but it enforces a minimum standard for CDs so that consumers buying CDs know they will play back in expected ways.

Sony's music discs that installed a rootkit to enforce their DRM were not standard CDs, and could not use the Phillips CD logo. If CD audio were simply an open standard, Sony and other media companies could freely reuse the standard to create user hostile media variations.

Conversely, the DVD standard involves inherent DRM technologies designed to prevent users from copying at all, even under fair use. DVDs are only designed to play back movies, and in many cases enforce playback of ads, trailers, FBI warnings, and sneak peak intro clips of the movie (which drive me nuts).

DVD creates a consistent user experience, but that experience is bad. The DVD standard also specifies a region coding system; anyone licensing the DVD technology portfolio must agree not to allow users to change the playback region more than five times.

Proprietary & Proliferation

Many people wouldn't think of DVDs as being proprietary technology, because the standard has been so widely adopted. However, proprietary had nothing to do with how readily available something is, it only conveys the idea of control and ownership. This confusion between ownership and proliferation is common.

The Mac platform, for example, is obviously proprietary; Apple owns and controls it. Many contrast this to the PC world, but the only thing open in the PC world is Linux. Microsoft’s Windows platform is proprietary, as are AMD and Intel's processors.

Cooper's Stupor

In an article Perspective: iPod forever? Not in its current form, the executive editor of CNET news.com, Charles Cooper, recently made a absurd statement that reflects the widespread ignorance of what proprietary actually means.

Cooper's article takes Apple to task for not opening the iTunes Music Store to work with players apart from the iPod. He cites the recent instant messaging collaboration between Yahoo and Microsoft as an example of interoperability, then complains about the failure of EU countries to force Apple into opening its FairPlay DRM. In the end, he decries "Apple's pursuit of its self-interest," and then writes what is perhaps the most absurd sentence available on the Internet:

"The irony is that the company that built its computers on a nonproprietary chip also wound up building a proprietary music service."

Cooper's Strike One

What was Cooper thinking? For starters, Intel's processors are quite obviously proprietary, just like AMD's, Motorola's, or IBM's PowerPC. He can't even say that Apple has moved to a "more open" IA-32 platform, because they don't support AMD or other alternatives, nor do they support PCs in general.

Stealing Mac OS X to run it scandalously on the PC of your choice does not make it open or non-proprietary, any more than stealing a copy of Microsoft Office somehow turns it into open software.

Cooper's Strike Two

Second, there is just no conceptual way to run a non-proprietary music store, because somebody has to own it. You could start a collective download center, like the old Napster, but a store, by definition, requires a proprietor. Asking for a non proprietary store is like asking for a WalMart that nobody owns; everyone just goes in and walks out with goods that come from elsewhere. Who would run it? Why? Bizarre.

Cooper's Strike Three

Perhaps what Cooper meant to say was that Apple should use open file formats for interoperability as the proprietors of their music store.

Actually, Apple did base iTunes upon the latest open standard for audio: AAC (aka MP4, m4a). AAC is no less of an open standard than MP3. Unlike MP3 however, AAC also provides a way for Apple to link songs to a licensed user. That's what Apple's protected AAC does: it links purchased AAC songs to a specific iTMS account.

Apple's iTunes file format was more open than their competitors' from the start. Music ripped using iTunes is by default in an open format: AAC, or MP3. Both Sony and Microsoft attempted to kill off open file formats of any kind and replace them with their own proprietary ones: Sony's ATRAC and Microsoft's WMA.

The real nagging problem lies with DRM. There is no way to enforce licensing ownership of entertainment media without the idea of ownership: a proprietor. The idea of a community created, non-proprietary type of DRM makes no sense. Any truly open standard for DRM would be, by design, unenforceable and easy to subvert. DRM is proprietary by definition. Open DRM makes as much sense as dehydrated water.

So while iTunes' AAC (m4a) is an open standard, protected Fariplay AAC files (m4p) from Apple's store are proprietary, just like Sony or Microsoft's. The major difference is that Apple allows users to burn their protected music files to standard CD audio for use anywhere.

Microsoft's WMA is designed to prevent burning, in order to sustain the failed idea of rental music. Similarly, Sony wanted users to replace their CDs with Sony's own copy protected ATRAC MiniDisc format.

Anyone crying about Apple's iTMS limits on interoperability is grossly ignorant of where the world was heading before Apple stepped in and prevented the wholesale abandonment of fair use rights and open standards.

In particular, for the head of CNET's tech opinion writers to make such outlandishly uninformed and stupid comment really shows the grand incompetence and spectacular lack of awareness among tech industry analysts. If it weren't for Apple, we'd be left with locked up Sony MiniDiscs and closed Microsoft WMA players.

The Fiction of Open Entertainment

DRM is all about protecting the rights of media makers. It can not be made non-proprietary. The open source model of community software development, used by Linux, works because those sharing are also contributing. It most certainly does not work for blockbuster commercial entertainment, because those consuming it are not creating it.

If you want to enjoy professionally created entertainment, you have to pay the entertainers. If you want free entertainment, you have reset your expectations. Free entertainment, such as community performances, user submitted artwork, podcasts, blogs, and viral video can all be fun, but they do not compete with commercially produced music, movies and books, the main targets DRM is trying to police in order to create a sustainable digital market for their creators.

Anyone demanding to receive Hollywood movies, bestseller novels, and slick pop music for free is not only attacking the artists and technicians that worked to produce those works, but also betraying the spirit of open source, which is not about stealing commercial software, but rather creating free alternatives. In the words of a witty Slashdot signature: Information wants to be free - Entertainment wants to be paid - You want to be cheap.

Cooper's Strike Four

Of course, cutting through Cooper's poorly worded populist attack on Apple's iTMS, it's obvious that what Cooper really means to say that is that Apple should broadly license their proprietary FairPlay technology, making it "open" as in open for others to use, not open as in non-proprietary.

In other words, that Apple should adopt Microsoft's failed business model for WMA, where Apple would play the architect of a software platform implemented by others.

In doing so, Cooper has fallen prey to the Microsoft Invincibility Myth. In reality, their software platform strategy has failed repeatedly, in WinCE gaming, PDAs, and Smartphones, and in WMA reference designs for players and music stores.

The reason Apple isn't following Microsoft's WinCE and WMA failures is the same reason they are not broadly licensing Mac OS X to run on various PCs. It's also the same reason why Sony doesn't license their PlayStation 2 or PSP to run on various other makers' hardware, or that Microsoft doesn't license their Xbox or Xbox 360 to run on various PC makers’ units. It's simply a bad strategy!

Of course, Microsoft would be ecstatic to have Apple license their WMA music DRM for use in the iTMS and on the iPod. So far, WMA has been nothing but a big loser for Microsoft. But neither Apple nor consumers would gain anything from such a move however.

They'd only be trading the simple and straightforward world Apple designed for the iTMS, with a chaotic and uncertain one where consumers would be faced with extra complications and headaches; some of their music could expire, some wouldn't burn to CD, and some wouldn't play on anything other than certain models of players. How lame!

Cooper's Strike Five

No amount of boo-hooing by Microsoft-aligned columnists changes the fact that the market has soundly rejected Microsoft's WMA. There is nothing "open" about the potential of interoperability between makers of rival DRM schemes.

DRM is inherently proprietary. Collusion amongst proprietors does not make for open standards. The only way Apple could open FairPlay is by allowing others to sell their own brand of Apple's FairPlay. That would be neither open nor free in any sense, nor would it benefit consumers to have access to an iTMS with a different name attached to it.

It's also grossly hypocritical for Microsoft backers to criticize Apple's combination of the iPod and iTMS, because those same lemmings have been defending the Microsoft monopoly for decades. They've insisted that Microsoft's Windows platform has created a stable, standard environment for PCs.

Why aren't they insisting that Windows run Linux apps, and that Microsoft create ways to run Windows applications on Linux? Why aren't they demanding that Microsoft port Exchange Server to Mac OS X? Why aren't they insisting that the Xbox and PlayStation run each other's games? Inane!

Cooper's Strike Six

It's also telling that Cooper references the collusion between Yahoo and Microsoft's proprietary IM standards as an example of open interoperability. He's so off base that it's simply insulting to his readership. Cooper should have pointed out that neither Yahoo nor Microsoft has worked to employ open standards in the field of IM, while Google and Apple have, using the free and open Jabber XMPP standard.

Fixing a corporate partnership to translate between two proprietary IM networks at the expense of free and open development is the exact opposite of consumer friendly interoperability. Cooper's article simply entrenches false and misleading ideas about what it means to be free, open, and interoperable, and misses a clear opportunity to encourage openness where it really counts. Instead, he simply regurgitates a populist witchhunt against the iPod.

Consumers don't benefit from multiple sources of the same DRM, or various flavors of DRM mixed together. They do benefit from open messaging standards. Write Cooper and tell him how wrong he is.

The Online Music and Movie Rental Myth

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Tech: Open Source & Intellectual Property

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