Apple iPod, the perfect virtual shoplifter ?

March 1, 2002

blackstar13 used our newssubmit to tell us about the Apple iPod which can easily be used for 'virtual shoplifting':

When Apple introduced the iPod, the company was aware that people might use it to rip off music from the Net or friends' machines. Each new iPod, in fact, is emblazoned with a sticker that warns, "Don't Steal Music."

But it is unlikely that Apple imagined people would walk into computer stores, plug their iPod into display computers and use it to copy software off the hard drives.

This is exactly the scenario recently witnessed by Kevin Webb at a Dallas CompUSA store.

Webb, a computer consultant from Dallas, was browsing his local CompUSA when he saw a young man walk toward him listening to an iPod. Webb recognized the iPod's distinctive ear buds.

The teenager stopped at a nearby display Macintosh, pulled the iPod from his pocket and plugged it into the machine with a FireWire cable. Intrigued, Webb peeped over the kid's shoulder to see him copying Microsoft's new Office for OS X suite, which retails for $500.

When the iPod is plugged into a Macintosh, its icon automatically pops up on the desktop. To copy software, all the kid had to do was drag and drop files onto the iPod's icon. Office for MacOS X is about 200 MB; it copies to the iPod's hard drive in less than a minute.

"Watching him, it dawned on me that this was something that was very easy to do," Webb said. "In the Mac world it's pretty easy to plug in and copy things. It's a lot easier than stealing the box."

The iPod is perfect for virtual shoplifting. It is designed as a digital music player, but its roomy 5-GB hard drive can be used as portable storage for all kinds of files, even the Macintosh operating system. In fact, it can operate as an external drive, booting up a machine and running applications. And while the iPod has a built-in anti-piracy mechanism that prevents music files from being copied from one computer to another, it has no such protections for software.

Ironically, Microsoft has pioneered an easy-to-use installation scheme on the Mac that makes its Mac software relatively easy to pilfer. The company is known for its sometimes heavy-handed, anti-piracy mechanisms in such products as Windows XP. When installing Office, users simply drag and drop the Office folder to their hard drive. Everything is included, including a self-repair mechanism that replaces critical files in the system folder.

So before you all go out and buy yourself an iPod remember that this doesn't work for Windows machines