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List:       dmca-discuss
Subject:    [DMCA_Discuss] 'Social Hardware' nears with Bluetooth iPod
From:       Vladimir Katalov <vkatalov () elcomsoft ! com>
Date:       2003-10-31 14:38:12
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'Social Hardware' nears with Bluetooth iPod
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
Posted: 31/10/2003 at 10:13 GMT

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/68/33702.html

Bluetooth is coming to the iPod, in the shape of third-party add-ons.
The first vendor to break cover, Extreme Tech's Jim Louderback has
discovered, is XtremeMac, which is creating a Bluetooth streaming
attachment that beams the iPod's audio to speakers: which could be a
headphones, a car hi-fi or a home entertainment center. XtremeMac uses
InfiniteRange's RangeScan chipset.

It would immediately solve a problem for drivers in countries where
ultra short-range transmitters, such as the iTrip, have been banned by
the regulatory authorities. And Jim's pretty excited: he calls it the
first useful Bluetooth application he's seen.

But it's only baby steps in the evolution of the platform; and a
Bluetooth audio profile is the first logical stage. However,
Bluetooth-equipped portable storage devices are already under
development (Toshiba already sells one). Intel calls this device
category the Personal Server, and in Intel's concept devices they are
equipped with both Bluetooth and 802.11. Microsoft this week delayed
its reference platform for a very similar concept. But Apple knows, as
every other ODM (original device manufacturer), that it need not be
bound by Redmond blueprints.

The idea of sharing music with strangers - and, in the manner of Last
Tango In Paris, you don't even have to know their names - proved very
popular when we discussed it a year ago. Readers particularly liked
the idea of a "What am I listening to?" option. This really is, to
paraphrase Silicon Valley's latest VC bubble, "social hardware".

So the next 18 months could be very interesting. In one very plausible
scenario, we'll first, see ODMs add Bluetooth for wireless headphones
and car stereos. Then they'll add OBEX support for file exchange, and
quite possible some hair-raising hacks to the Bluetooth specification
to allow one-to-many short-range streams. (Underneath the many layers
of specifications, Bluetooth is simply a serial protocol, so this
could require some ingenuity). Then, a couple of years after that, we
can envisage Ultra Wide Band allowing huge file transfers in devices
which require very little power. You'll be able to beam a movie to a
companion on the bus faster than you could describe it.

Which is where the plan runs into practical obstacles. The Digital
Millennium Copyright Act prohibits the sale or importation into the
United States of any device whose primary purpose is copyright
circumvention. We can expect Hollywood and the RIAA to push even
harder for DRM into playback devices such as the iPod.

Then again, the DMCA is a uniquely American and (soon to be) European
problem. To bet that the rest of the world won't build such a low-cost
device is to bet that people the world over suddenly lose their
appetite for sharing music. And who's going to bet against that?

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