Dr. Dobb's Journal October, 2004
As the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) slimed its way through Congress, one of the many concerns was on the future of reverse engineering—the "discovery by engineering techniques of the underlying ideas and principles that govern how a machine, computer program, or other technological device works" (http://www.ieeeusa.org/forum/POSITIONS/reverse.html). Specifically, the worry was whether reverse engineering, a longstanding and accepted scientific and engineering practice, would be outlawed and relegated to back alleys and mean streets.
Almost immediately, fears seemed to be confirmed, what with charges filed against the likes of Jon Johansen and Dmitry Sklyarov. In retrospect, these cases may have been mere skirmishes and not battles (unless, of course, your last name happened to be "Johansen" or "Sklyarov"). But that might be about to change because of money—lots and lots of money.
Yes, lots and lots of money is what you get when you sell 100 million songs at $1 each in just over a year—which is what Apple has done with its iPod player and iTunes Online Music Store (http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/). While Apple will only fess up to a "small" third-quarter profit for iTunes, the prospect of lots and lots of money has led mass merchandisers such as Best Buy and Wal-Mart to jump into the online music fray—up against Apple, AOL, FullMusic, and others. Everyone, it seems, wants a piece of the $13 billion recording industry pie.
So what does this have to do with reverse engineering? Well, as it turns out, individual online music purveyors (like Apple) have generally sported proprietary, incompatible formats. Consequently, you can't download a song from Best Buy into, say, an iPod—until now, that is.
RealNetworks has upset the online apple cart with the announcement of its Harmony Technology (http://www.real.com/harmony/), which claims to be the "first [Digital Rights Management] translation system to enable consumers to securely transfer purchased music to every popular secure music device." In other words, owners of Apple iPod devices can purchase and download music from sources such as RealNetwork's RealPlayer Music Store, and Harmony automatically translates songs from one format into another. In addition to four generations of the iPod, RealNetworks claims its Harmony-based music store is compatible with more than 70 devices, including 14 from Creative, 14 from Rio, 18 from iRiver, 9 from Palm, and 7 from RCA, not to mention systems from Gateway and Dell. Putting this another way, Harmony supports Digital Rights Management systems such as Apple's FairPlay, Windows Media Audio, and the RealNetworks Helix.
But the stakes are higher than just a couple of bucks for a do-re-mi here and fa-so-la-ti-do there. For one thing, iTunes downloads are pushing iPod sales, with 860,000 units sold in the third quarter this year for $249 million in revenue. In turn, iPods are driving Macintosh sales, with 876,000 computers sold in the same period for $1.26 billion in revenue. But the big surprise, according to analysts such as Charles Wolf, is how the iPod is propelling the migration of Windows users to iBooks and PowerBooks. Added to that, Apple and Motorola (the seventh largest cellphone producer in the world) are talking nice about implementing iTunes in Motorola cellphones, thereby expanding the market even more. Like I said, we're talking about lots and lots of money.
That's why, on one hand, Apple can't just lay down and let RealNetworks walk away with a business that is becoming increasingly critical to Apple's success. But on the other hand, Apple may not have much to say about it.
RealNetworks insists that what it has done is legal and technically not reverse engineering (whatever that means). Apple has accused Real of adopting "the tactics and ethics of a hacker," which sounds like a compliment to me. In any event, Apple is sure to closely examine Harmony. The issue will be whether RealNetworks breached some kind of license (click-through, shrink-wrap, or otherwise), or strayed into the realm of unraveling copy protection. According to the DMCA, reverse engineering is not permissible if the goal is to circumvent access controls (as with Johansen and Sklyarov). However, reverse engineering is permissible "for the purpose of enabling interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs." The key word here is "interoperability," which rhymes with "compatibility," which is the word RealNetworks founder Rob Glaser carefully used in the Harmony announcement: "Compatibility is key to bringing digital music to the masses." It is also the reason BMG's Thomas Hesse said in the same announcement: "Interoperability of devices and jukebox software is one of the biggest challenges for today's music consumer."
In all likelihood, reverse engineering will again come under fire as Apple tears into Harmony, keeping in mind that the iPod license says buyers can't "copy, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, (or) attempt to derive the source code." Ironically, the end-user license for the Harmony beta says the same thing. In any event, let's hope that if Apple takes legal steps in defense of its proprietary formats, it's not at cost of further eroding the right to reverse engineer—one of the most valuable tools engineers have at hand.
Jonathan Erickson
editor-in-chief