Normally, you’d have to wait till the end of the story to get the answer. I can’t stretch it that far. They have NOTHING in common. In fact, they’re more than that – they’re like Microsoft and Linux.

We all love our iPods. Who wouldn’t pay 0.99 for Coldplay’s new single? It’s all good until you try playing your now $500 collection on anything BUT your iPod. One problem is Apple’s DRM license (called FairPlay) is very flexible and can be changed on fly by whoever is in charge. If they decide tomorrow that you need to pay a monthly fee for your collection, guess what, they could do that. They’ve already decreased the number of times you can burn your play lists from 10 to 7.

In addition, Apple is not happy licensing its FairPlay to just anybody. Motorola is the only company who sells a device (new iTunes phone) that plays FairPlay music.

Music is just the first step. The new video iPod is too small to play movies but it plays all sorts of low-rez videos fine. Soon our collections will grow with tens of TV shows and music videos and we’ll be even more reliant on Apple for future access to OUR collections.

As a result, the tech community has growing concerns about creating another monoculture (a discreet way to refer to a monopoly). A recent “editorial” blog at ZDnet, issued a Declaration of InDRMpendence – effectively a big NO to DRM-protected content. To sign the declaration, all you need to do is post a comment on the blog. As far as I’m concerned, MP3 is all the encoding I need.

Note: Originally posted at SmartApps