[I enjoy Nathan Newman's blog, but he isn't always kind to dissenting points of view, so when I posted a long reply to his "Go France!" posting this morning, I saved a copy in case he didn't "approve" it for his readers. Now I see that he's posted later comments, including his own, but not mine. Just in case it's not a technological snafu, here's his post and what I submitted that has not yet appeared.]

Apple can't be happy as France weighs forcing iPods to play music from other services, instead of just ITunes [sic].

The principle is right-- companies should not be able to leverage control of technology to control what content you can buy. Such tech strategies threaten to balkanize markets and create lots of incompatibility, locking customers into technologies and undermining competition.

And I'm just personally pissed that my IPod can't play free online books from the New York City Public Library. It's just criminal for a company not to play such free content. There's a bit of a war already on the concept of libraries and free content-- and it would be good if Apple was slapped down a bit by France and, hopefully, the US eventually.

Nathan, it's distressing that Microsoft's spin has you so confused.

The eBooks you mention are only available in Windows Media format, a digital format that has far more restrictions than iTunes Music Store tracks ever had. Windows Media files can have such Draconian protection that they actually only play a certain number of times, or for a certain number of days, requiring your computer or your player to check in over the Internet every so often to make sure you still have "permission" to listen.

And despite years of protests from Linux and open-source advocates, Microsoft refuses to make DRM-protected Windows Media available on any platform other than - you guessed it - Microsoft Windows. At least iTunes runs on two platforms.

Apple's statements and actions have made it clear that they'd prefer if the music industry didn't require any DRM at all, and iTunes has refused to carry albums and songs from companies that want heavy restrictions. Fewer restrictions means more iPod sales, and iPods (not songs) are where the profits are.

Microsoft, on the other hand, has been deliberately scaring the crap out of content producers for most of a decade, insisting that unless they use Windows Media DRM, their content will all be stolen. Remember Steve Ballmer telling a crowd of content producers that the most prevalent form of music on the iPod was "stolen?" And how that didn't happen with Microsoft's formats?

Microsoft desperately wants someone to force Apple to place Windows Media capabilities on the iPod. If that happens, then Microsoft goes to the RIAA and MPAA and says, "Look, if you use our stuff, you can impose any restriction you want, and now the iPod has to play it. You don't have to sell your tracks through the iTunes Music Store with light DRM anymore, you can encrypt the crap out of them, make them only good for 2 weeks, whatever you want. And we'll let you charge more than $0.99 per song, too!"

Record companies, having wanted this all along, shift in droves to Windows Media and away from the iTunes Music Store. $0.99 singles vanish, as do albums that make most of their songs available individually, since the record labels hate it when people have those choices. Now Microsoft owns the technology behind all online music.

Then, in true Microsoft form, a year or two later, they come to Apple and say, "Oh, by the way, we're no longer interested in licensing full playback capabilities to you for the iPod at the same price we charge other companies. They're completely dependent on us, but you're not, so it'll now cost you twice as much to license Windows Media playback unless you ditch everything that's not Windows Media." Until a court finds a monopoly on that - and even then, as we've seen with the current Justice Department - there's almost no recourse.

Microsoft's goal for more than a decade has been complete ownership of all online media. In the 1999 antitrust trial, Apple and Microsoft executives testified that Microsoft planned to punish Apple by dropping Microsoft Office for Macintosh, at a time when Apple was buffeted by bad news in the press every day. One of Microsoft's conditions for Apple? Killing the QuickTime architecture on Windows, and changing QuickTime Player to a simple media player on top of the Windows Media architecture. QuickTime was a more mature and robust architecture, and Microsoft knew the best way to defeat it was to force Apple to kill it. Apple, to its credit, refused that condition, and Microsoft backed down under DoJ scrutiny. If Apple had capitulated, you'd have no choice in any music today but Windows Media.

If the record companies insist on DRM, and there's no sign they're wising up, then the best thing for customers is multiple players with multiple formats. Microsoft has the market muscle to foil that. Right now, every music player except the iPod is completely dependent on Microsoft's proprietary technology. Apple's iPod is not because, unlike the companies that started out to sell music without owning any technology, Apple has QuickTime and doesn't need Microsoft's technology.

The only way Apple keeps Microsoft from completely owning the music market, to the detriment of music listeners everywhere, is by refusing Microsoft's attempts to take over the iPod by forcing Windows Media onto it. Microsoft knows it can't blackmail Apple into that kind of capitulation anymore, so they set out to convince everyone else that, for some reason, Apple's proprietary light-DRM is "bad for choice," but 200 other services that all use Microsoft's proprietary very heavy DRM with no other option is "choice."

Since the music industry will not allow selling tracks without DRM, you have just two choices: both Apple and Microsoft offering their own technology and letting the market decide, or everything running on Windows Media and Microsoft controlling it all. So far, the market choose Apple's less-restrictive policies and favorable pricing over Microsoft's complex and annoying DRM system. Microsoft is not very happy about that, so they're out to convince people that the ability to choose something other than Windows Media is not "choice" at all, and you fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.

If you want eBooks to play on your iPod, tell the NY Public Library to publish them in open, unrestricted formats that would even play on Linux machines. If they can't or won't due to copyright restrictions, that's hardly Apple's fault - but Microsoft is thrilled every time you think it is.