The Trouble with Tethering

RealNetworks threw down the gauntlet earlier this week when they  introduced some new software making it possible
to play music downloaded from their music store on the iPod, challenging Apple's "monopoly" on downloads for the world's most popular digital audio player. To make some sense of all the ruckus, we asked Siva Vaidhyanathan, an assistant professor of Culture and Communication at NYU and the author of

The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System, to put things in perspective for us. He explains why RealNetworks' move might actually be good for Apple and why all these attempts by companies to tether their customers to specific products, platforms, and formats are bound to backfire.

The Bed, Bath, and Beyond store on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan was overflowing with young married couples last Saturday. And we were more part of the problem than part of the solution.

My wife and I were there to score a new coffee maker. Our old one worked just fine. But, as one would expect with a white drip edition, it was now off-white thanks to too many drips.

So we looked on with enthusiasm at the new pressurized personal coffee makers. They push hot water through a sealed
"pod" filled with a precise measure of coffee. It was neat, slick, well-designed, and promised a strong, good,
dependable dose. It's the same technology that supplies those surprisingly good coffee available from coin machines in public spaces in Europe.

After a half-hour of debating the pros and cons of such a radical "format shift," we left without one of these cool new machines. We opted out because these specialized "pods" are essentially "tethered" to this brand of coffee maker.

What if we hate the coffee that the company supplies for the maker? What if the company goes out of business? What if they raise the prices of pods? We would no longer order pounds of unpodded coffee from Peet's in Berkeley or run across the street to the deli for an emergency brick of cheap coffee. And my favorite New York coffee supplier, Oren's on Waverly Place, would no longer get my business.

Tethering should be a great deal for hardware makers. They all seem to be trying to corner the market on "secondary goods." Whether they make coffee makers, garage door openers, ink-jet printers, batteries, video games, or digital music files, producers are employing tools that range from copyright to contract to design to freeze out generic competitors.

But some times, as with the coffee maker, such tethering limits consumer choice to such a degree that many consumers who would otherwise jump into the early adoption game eschew the new device in favor of diversity and flexibility.

Other times, as with ink-jet printers, we don't quite realize what we are getting into. And consumers lose.

Printer makers, garage-door-opener companies, and electronics manufacturers are busy installing useless "handshake"
code as an interface between the replaceable, disposable product (ink cartridge, remote control, battery) and the more durable host device. Soon we will see automobile companies limit the replacement market for batteries, filters, and tires by installing useless code or contractual restrictions on those who lease.

By using computer code as an "access control device," they can invoke the power of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act to stifle competition from generic competitors.

The tethering of secondary goods within the extra-copyright industries is yet another piece of evidence that the DMCA
is among the stupidest laws every passed. It is by all measures a complete failure that has retarded innovation and done nothing to protect copyright holders. And it has punished consumers.

The latest tethering conflict is rolling out in the digital music market. Apple is making nasty rumblings about the latest move by Real Networks. Real is offering a hack that allows its protected song files from its Rhapsody music service to work on the iPod.

Apple, which has seen some success with its own flavor of digital rights management regulating its iTunes music files,
is not happy about this new competition in the secondary goods market.

As anyone who has considered the growing array of portable digital music players and services knows, the Balkanization of formats is a major impediment to the long-term success of such services. Every service is trying to be the last one standing so it can dictate form and formats, and corner the market on secondary goods. So Apple wishes it could tether its iPod to its iTunes.

What Apple doesn't get is that the success of the iPod depends necessarily on the least tetherable music format: the MP3. If iPod users could not play home-brewed MP3s, they would have far too little music to justify those huge hard drives. The iPod is an MP3 player first, a portable hard drive second, and an iTunes player a distant third. Its flexibility and adaptability are essential traits.

If Apple is smart (as it occasionally is, but rarely in this domain) it will welcome Rhapsody users. Tethering may be the hot corporate move of the moment. It may be what all the consultants are pushing (corporate consultants are basically anti-competitive). But it's ultimately bad business and – when backed up by law – bad public policy.

And as soon as Oren's starts offering replacement pods for these cool new coffee makers, we will be back blocking the aisle at Bed, Bath, and Beyond.