iTunes DRM spat pits EFF against Apple

The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a lawsuit against Apple on Monday. For a lot of MacBook toting, copyright-hating tech-sector workers, it's like watching our parents fight. But who's right?

Here's the story: Late last year, an anonymous contributor to the BluWiki wiki site began a discussion about a project called Ipodhash, whose goal was to reverse-engineer the digital rights management system in the latest version of Apple's iTunes. The ultimate purpose of Ipodhash was to let iPhone and iPod users run alternatives to iTunes, such as Banshee and Songbird. Hackers have been successful at cracking Apple's system in the past.

In November, Apple lawyers sent a cease and desist letter to the host of the site, Beaverton, Oregon based OdioWorks. Apple's claim was that Ipodhash violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. 

DMCA takedown notices are nothing new. Usually, the owners of a site like BluWiki seek shelter under the  DMCA's Safe Harbor provisions, which hold site operators and Internet service providers blameless for the content posted there. But Ars Technica explains how the EFF and OdioWorks are trying to make the case bigger than Apple versus OdioWorks:

Instead of merely arguing that the DMCA's Safe Harbor provisions protect OdioWorks from being held responsible for content posted by users, OdioWorks and the EFF are pushing for a ruling stating that even the users have the right to post such information on the basis of free speech. In the same way that hosting information on how to make a firecracker does not make one a terrorist, OdioWorks believes that hosting information on enabling third-party software to work with Apple's devices does not make one a hacker or pirate.

If the case plays out in OdioWorks' favor, the EFF will have created a legal precedent for anyone on the Internet to post information about how to work around copyright protection software.

Who to side with? If the goal of the project were to get out of paying for music, as many such projects are, that would be one thing. But in this case, Ipodhacks' unknown author was trying to let non-stealing nerds use Apple's portable players with third-party software. Apple's goal isn't to stop piracy, but to keep customers locked into the company's iTunes app. To do this, Apple's management is allowing its lawyers to sue a website host, rather than the anonymous author of the ipodhacks project.

Unless you can honestly explain how letting users replace iTunes with another app will lead to more piracy or significant lost revenue to Apple, siding with the EFF is the way to go.