Navio to challenge FairPlay DRM

Navio, a company specializing in DRM, is busy reverse-engineering Apple's FairPlay DRM to enable music providers other than Apple to sell DRM-encoded downloads that can be played on iPods. This move would be a boon to other online retailers who want to take advantage of the popularity of iPods.

RealNetworks employed a similar strategy in 2004, allowing consumers to use its Harmony technology to buy songs from sites other than the iTunes Music Store and play them on iPods. Apple didn't like that at all, likening RealNetworks' tactics and ethics to those of a hacker trying to break into the iPod. Apple countered with an iPod software update that tried to prevent RealNetworks' downloads from playing on iPods. RealNetworks got around that attempt with its own update that apparently still works.

Navio's chief operating officer Ray Schaaf recently told Playlist that, "With respect to FairPlay, right now Apple doesn't license that, so we take the view that as RealNetworks allows users to buy FairPlay songs on Rhapsody, we would take the same approach." Schaaf didn't specify which content providers his company plans to work with, saying only that: "We are working with a number of studios, a number of [music] labels and we are working with [cell] carriers."

Apple hasn't responded as yet. It could send in the lawyers, and/or tweak its software again to try to foil Navio's break-in, but it looks like challengers will continue to pop up. What outcome do you predict?