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Bill Brown

A complicated man.

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I wrestled a little bit with the issues surrounding Real Networks vs. Apple in the former’s reverse-engineering of Apple’s Fairplay DRM. On the surface, it really does seem to be about iPod owners getting to decide what goes on their iPods. Once you get past this superficial take, it becomes quite obvious that Real is being disingenuous at best and trying to steal Fairplay after Apple refused—as was its right—to license it to them.

As usual, John Gruber hit the nail on the head in his latest entry, grasping the essentials of this debate and refuting any possible objections with dispatch. There’s really nothing I can add here.

In the entry, he also linked to John C. Welch’s blog as a reference. I’m a big fan of Welch’s writings as well, but I didn’t know that he had a blog. Now if John Siracusa would start one, then the three Johns would be a formidable blogging triumvirate of Macintosh opinion.