As the head of peer-to-peer content distribution company Red Swoosh, he was naturally curious to try Roxio's new Napster download service when it launched last week. Trouble is, Napster uses Microsoft technology that doesn't work with his iPod, the best-selling portable music player produced by Apple Computer.
"People don't like that," Kalanik said. "Until these services have standards, and they're compatible, and you can play whatever you have on whatever device you have, people are going to resort to the services that do give them that. And those are illicit."
Incompatible anticopying technologies known as digital rights management (DRM) are being applied to everything from music files to Microsoft Word documents, and the lack of rules that can make these schemes work together is increasingly prompting calls for a standards revolution.
The problem, critics say, is that companies can all too easily turn DRM into a powerful tool for locking customers into proprietary technologies. For example, files that users purchase through Apple's iTunes music store won't work with portable music players other than the company's own iPod device.
More broadly, some worry that Microsoft's new Office suite of software, and its ability to prevent unauthorised distribution of email or Word files, will lock the business world even more deeply into using Office, since other programs might not be able to read the locked files. A recent report from a panel of security experts warned against this trend, saying that using content protection to tie users to Microsoft Office and Windows could create damaging security risks.
Indeed, Microsoft's rise in a number of different copy protection arenas worries critics. They're calling for cross-industry agreements that will let multiple companies create and produce standard ways of protecting content, in much the same way that multiple companies can create Web browsers or email programs that send secure communications to each other.
"Unless users can access content without all the hassle of dealing with different digital rights management systems, DRM is a nonstarter," said Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) founder Leonardo Chiariglione, who recently created a new international group focused on content protection issues. "The alternative is a digital media stalemate, where nothing moves."
