With several European countries threatening to force Apple to license FairPlay, it's time for the company to do so on its own accord. Such a move would go a long towards demonstrating that Apple is confident in its ability to compete with the quality of its products, not onerous, self-serving restrictions.

We've known for a long time that Apple has had to agree to certain digital rights management (DRM) protocols to protect songs sold by the iTunes Store. Without those restrictions, Apple would not have a license from the music studios to sell music, but that's not what European countries are concerned about right now. The real issue seems to be the linkage between iTunes and the iPod. Namely, if you buy a song from the iTunes store, it is only playable on an Apple iPod.

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Here's the gist of the argument, by Ewald van Kouwen in Amsterdam, from the first link above, "What we want from Apple is that they remove the limitations that prevent you from playing a song you download from iTunes on any player other than an iPod.... When you buy a music CD it doesn't play only on players made by Panasonic. People who download a song from iTunes shouldn't be bound to an iPod for the rest of their lives."

As we know, songs purchased from the iTunes store are protected with a DRM system, controlled by Apple, called FairPlay. If a company were to license the FairPlay system from Apple, then their players could play songs purchased from iTunes. In fact, there was as story last week about how Apple may do just that, but on a limited basis.

The current argument, it seems to me, is not that European countries want Apple to abbrogate it's DRM agreements with the labels. Rather, they want the most popular online music download service on the planet to allow its music to play on any music player that the customer may select.

So far, we don't know a lot about the discussions Apple has had with other manufacturers about licensing FairPlay. Does Apple want too much money? If money isn't the issue, is Apple being hard to deal with so that they end up not having to work with other music player companies who want that license?

Here's the core issue. Apple firmly believes that the design, usability, and quality of the iPod make it superior to other music players. Apple has already demonstrated, over and over, that they have the industrial capacity and wealth to design better personal music players than most any other company on the planet. So rather than compel customers to buy iPods by force, perhaps it's a wise time to openly license the FairPlay DRM system. Publicly announce that any company that wants to use it is free to implement it into their music player.

Apple ignited the portable digital music revolution. They have greatly benefited. And now the European nations are saying, it's time to become a fair and proper steward of their success. I agree.

Success has its rewards. And responsibilities to be a just, self-confident competitor.