DRM provider Navio has pledged to hack Apple's FairPlay digital rights management technology, and provide that hack to online music retailers. It's hard to imagine that any retailer would take up that generous offer and court Apple's wrath. Navio claims RealNetworks as inspiration—Real has been poking Apple with a sharp DRM-puncturing stick for over a year, enabling RealPlayer Music Store customers to encode purchases in a way that works in iPods. "Typically, we embrace and want to work with the providers of the DRM," said Ray Schaaf, Navio's chief operating officer. "With respect to FairPlay, right now Apple doesn't license that, so we take the view that as RealNetworks allows users to buy FairPlay songs on Rhapsody, we would take the same approach."

I'm not certain that's the soundest or most defensible reasoning, and it gets more cryptic: "As technology advances with a software release or a different encoding scheme, you also need to have grandfathered rights for prior versions of songs," Schaaf said. "If a change is made or required then we would do it just the same way that Real or others would do it." Grandfathered rights? I'm confused.

Moving on: "For us it's about the issuing of a right that grants you access to data or content and even non-commercial things like a calendar, for instance." What the heck is he talking about?

Anyway, I always enjoy it when FairPlay is attacked, and I look forward to some hostile back-and-forth.