  This intrepid Boston Globe reporter makes a urlLink ridiculous claim that because Apple's best-selling iPod (3 million sold and counting) is proprietary in nature, only playing music files from its iTunes service, which utilizes its "FairPlay" digital rights management and does not allow its files to be played on other digital music players, nor play files from the other digital music services such as Napster, that it effectively encourages stealing. Forcing people to go to use P2P sites like Kazaa to get all of their music. That's like saying if I buy a gun for home protection, Smith & Wesson is encouraging me to enter into a life of armed robbery or murder. DVD-Audio discs don't play in my CD player, SACD's don't play in my DVD player. Proprietary formats are nothing new. Consumers make a choice. What levels the playing field is equal availability of all titles in every medium. When I buy an iPod, I understand going in that it only works with the iTunes music service AND any MP3 music files I may already have on my computer.
I'm not sure I see how that suddenly implants visions of criminality in my head. Apple has done more than ANY company to offer a legal, easy and comprehensive system for consumers to download music from the internet. Rather than demonize them, why not focus on the true culprits - the music industry. If the industry would catch up and respond to comsumer demand, they would make ALL of their music catalog available equally to all of the digital music download services and let the consumer make the final decision about how they would like to access and purchase their downloads.
All this journalist is doing is engaging in some kind of biased vendetta against Apple and their cutting-edge products and making an outlandish claim that buying an iPod will turn people into digital music pirates. Nothing could be further from the truth and it is just plain wrong to suggest otherwise. 
