The time will soon come for Apple to lead the effort for interoperability in the online music download business, according to BusinessWeek's Arik Hesseldahl. In a column titled, "Apple, Tear Down This Wall," Mr. Hesseldahl said that consumers will eventually want to be able to play their downloads anywhere they want, and that Apple should lead the way in developing such a format it could then license to other companies.

Triggering the column was the recent news that Jon "DVD Jon" Johansen has started a new company called DoubleTwist Ventures, whose business is bypassing Apple's FairPlay technology. FairPlay governs the DRM restrictons on iTunes downloads, keeping them from being played outside of iTunes or an iPod, and DoubleTwist will allow other companies to sell downloadable songs with a non-Apple DRM that FairPlay will nonetheless recognize and play.

Mr. Hesseldahl sees this as a harbinger of things to come, following the traditional wisdom that most digital locks will eventually be broken. At the same time, other companies are following Apple's lead of developing closed systems that tie download services and digital media devices together. His premise is that all these closed systems will eventually encourage consumers to bypass them and be pirates (again).

"Now may not be the time," he said. "iPod sales still account for 40% or so of Apple's revenue, and let's face it, the iTunes Store exists to sell iPods. But the time for a universal format is soon coming, because millions of frustrated digital music consumers, including some iPod owners, will demand that a downloaded song be as universally playable as a CD is today."

The solution, he said, is for Apple to be the Sony/Philips of the digital download market , and provide a universally-licensable format similar to the CD format those two companies developed and licensed.