Edited by author 08-29-2002 02:59 PM

...Apple must pay a royalty to the dvd consortium for each copy of the software. Since the software is a free dowload, Apple is paying the royalty on copies that people can actually use, i.e. computers that ship with the hardware to do so.

So instead of paying $1 each time someone downloads iDvd, they pay for each burner. Since they actually get revenue for the burner, that's a much better proposition for them.

(from a reader comment on Scott Rosenberg's Salon blog.)

I'm pasting this for perspective's sake. I still consider Apple's act a poor reflection of the DCMA, but not as clear-cut an Evil Act as some might think. Software patches -- "cracks" count as such, and this is actually an example of a reverse-engineering crack -- should not be illegal.

That said, I'm not sure what Apple's best recourse would've been if the DCMA hadn't been enacted. Perhaps some alternative business model that didn't depend on the assumption reverse-engineering wasn't legal....

Food for thought.