HiFi Blog: digital audio goodness

What is Navio? Playlist Mag has a story on’em, and I remember reading about them elsewhere. In short, and assuming I’m reading things correctly here, they plan to act as the “DRM-middleman”, between music publishers/stores and the customers.

By reverse-engineering Apple’s DRM (FairPlay) and having already access to WindowsMedia DRM (since MS licences it to anyone that asks—and yes, we know they don’t do it because they’re good guys)... wait, where were we? Yeah right. So, they’ve got access to both Apple’s and Microsoft’s DRM which means that any music store that uses their technology can sell songs for your iPod and PlaysForSure-compatible MP3 player.

Thing is, Apple shouldn’t be too happy about the Navio guys reverse-engineering their DRM. OK, RealNetworks’ Rhapsody does it do (cf. Harmony) but Apple broke that once (Rhapsody worked around it with a software update) and for all we know, they can break it again whenever they want—for now, they’re just being apathetic.

I’m trying to say that basing a business upon hacking someone’s else code doesn’t seem like a solid/sound (pun intended) business model to me; for the FairPlay part, you’re basically putting yourself on Apple’s mercy.