TechWag

In a company that is on the record as being anti-drm, and has a tendency to not really mind that people are out there hacking their Iphone and IPods to do neat things not intended, then changes their mind. The patent application for a WGA type system seems unusual, if not out of character for Apple, when Steve Jobs is on the record for wanting to do away with DRM for music.

Apple’s “Run-time Code Injection to Perform Checks” would by a digital rights management (DRM) system that would inject code into application running on a user’s computer to check the software was authentic. If fake, it would close the application and render it unusable. Source: Digital Trends

If Apple is going to go into a DRM system that injects control code into running applications, and then render them unusable if not found to be authentic, nothing is going to piss off users more than that. Especially if the system decides to do random things, with software that was actually purchased and is authentic.

Microsoft has learned some hard lessons with Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA), from keeping the systems up, to non-conforming code sets. It will be interesting to see how apple approaches this process, but even more interesting will be to see if they kill off their market advantage by doing things like this.

Tags: technology, idea //