Time to Face the Music on File Sharing

· "Microsoft solved the compatibility problem years ago when it created its PlaysForSure standard."

That depends on how you define "solved."

Microsoft can point to dozens of PlaysForSure devices from various companies, not including its own incompatible Zune. Even users of Palm organizers and smartphones can join the fun, by using NormSoft's Pocket Tunes. But when it comes to anything more complex than a handheld gadget, Microsoft takes a different stance.

Although the company allows other people to develop Window Media-compatible programs for other operating systems, such as Telestream's Flip4Mac for Mac OS X, it won't let them add PlaysForSure support.

When asked why PlaysForSure should be confined to Windows, Microsoft says it would be too difficult to keep that software secure on another operating system. That's almost the same excuse Jobs used in his online essay, except that Apple still managed to ship a Windows version of iTunes.

Either Microsoft needs to upgrade its understanding of competing operating systems, or it should admit that promoting Windows outweighs living up to its own talking points.

· "This is the price we have to pay to stop illegal file sharing."

Just try to prove that.

First, as Jobs noted in his essay, the vast majority of music sold today comes on audio CDs that impose no copying restrictions. DVDs include copying controls, but they were breached years ago.

Even if you abolished these old formats in favor of media locked up with technologies like FairPlay or PlaysForSure, you'd still have no bar to music file sharing. Both Apple and Microsoft's systems allow buyers of a song to burn it to an audio CD that can then be copied back to a computer in an unrestricted format.

The side effect: It only took a few minutes with a file-sharing program to find MP3 copies of songs sold only on iTunes. And even without the audio-CD workaround, hackers have repeatedly dismantled the defenses of FairPlay and PlaysForSure.

Either way, all you need is one unprotected copy loose in the wild; that copy can then be duplicated endlessly. And no existing anti-piracy system can stop people from downloading and playing those copies.

The technology can still serve a role in online music or movie rental services, which have drawn far fewer customers than stores like iTunes, but for purchases it does too little to justify its costs. In practice, it only stops copying by the unmotivated, the over-scheduled or the inexperienced -- the people most likely to buy a song or movie online as long as they can do so quickly, easily and cheaply.

In the music industry, a growing number of outlets beyond the big-name companies, from tiny indie-rock operations to the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Smithsonian Institution's Folkways label, have realized the futility of copy-restriction software and now sell digital downloads in open, unrestricted formats.

At this point, this all amounts to little more than expensive psychotherapy for Hollywood executives. It's the height of arrogance for them to keep sending us the bill.

Living with technology, or trying to? E-mail Rob Pegoraro atrobp@washpost.com.