This editorial is incredible.

Apparently, it is somehow wrong for Apple to only sell music in a format that works exclusively with iTunes/iPod. Why? Because there is a great moral principle that sellers put customers first.

Fine. Let’s pass a law that all consumable goods on the market must be given away for free.

If you see a problem with that scenario (i.e. mass poverty), then you have to know that the principle needs some elaboration if it is going to mean anything.

Here’s a newsflash. No one knew at Apple that iPod was going to be a complete success and revolutionize the music industry. I realize someone probably confidently predicted that it would happen in Apple, but so what? That is what entrepreneurs do: bloviate about what an incredibly important and inevitably successful their new gamble will be. And many–probably most–go boasting in to that black night of bankruptcy and failure. The ones who are truly entrepreneurial find some other gamble to claim as a sure success and gain backers and try again.

But when Apple came out with the iPod it is not as if they were puppetmasters pulling our strings by some sort of heinous monopoly. C’mon! We’re talking about Apple the joke of the computing world in much of the nineties while PCs took over. They had no reason to think their succes with iPod was guarranteed. They weren’t an omnipotent empire simply finding a new way to squeeze extra taxes from their subjects–they were producers trying to invent a new product.

So, if they came up with the idea that they would sell only a format that their program iTunes can play, this isn’t some self-evident violation of the putting-the-customer-first principle. Is anyone really going to claim that consumers were better off without iPods? They give people a new way to buy and listen to music and they get accused of some sort of sin? They get hauled before the socialist republics of Western Europe and asked to explain themselves? Explain what exactly.

Look, I simly don’t use the iTunes store for music. I haven’t bought an iPod yet, so I figure I don’t want to be locked into anything. But I have looked around for mp3 stores, and as far as I could find, they were pretty much pathetic in their selectiong. As far as I know, an exclusive music program might be the only way the iTunes store is able to offer the selection it does. If you don’t like it, there are these silver disc things that are still sold both new and used in music stores. They are called “CDs” (“Compact Discs). If you own a computer you can put it in the drive and use your completely free iTunes program to convert it to mp3. Then you can use any device you want, including but not limited to an iPod, to play it. In other words, you’re not “forced” to do anything. And I know from personal experience that even without an iPod or use of the store (except for the mysteriously free Tuesday download) a consumer is still much better off than he was before the iPod revolution. You can make do and enjoy a better life.

Or you can get your politicians (who are, of course, always the best people to make business decisions for us all) to use fines and jails to force people to do whatever you want in the hope it will produce an even better life that you imagine.

Which of these two options sounds like the civilized one?

It is almost a measurable cycle. Lots of businesses try new ventures. The ones that succeed are appreciated for a time until everyone regards their success as unfair and starts demanding they give everyone more goodies. In best case scenarios this corresponds to when their success might allow the company to change business models. But even then it is hardly right to act like people who make nice things need to answer for it like they have committed a crime.