Someone in the mainstream world has had the courage to say something that needed to be said: Apple's approach to digital media is not only very consumer friendly, the Wintel hegemony's approach is not. Dan Gillmor of the San Jose Mercury News has fired a shot across the bow of the entertainment industry, Intel/AMD, and Microsoft, and I personally hope it is a shot heard loud and clear. Mr. Gillmor charges that while the Wintel companies are busily building Digital Rights Management controls into their respective chips and software, Apple is building its machines in a way that leaves consumers free to use their digital media as they see fit.

If you are not concerned about this area, you should be, and quick. The media companies are working overtime to control the way you use every song, every movie, and every electronic book, whether or not you legally own it. They want to control when you use it, where you use it, how use it, and if possible, make you pay for each and every time you do so. The cover is the threat of piracy, but what's truly at stake is that absolute control over your content. Dan Gillmor, a syndicated technology columnist for the Mercury News, has a far broader reach than a Mac editor ever will, and his message is not only good for Apple and the Mac platform, it is also good for consumers everywhere.

Intel's doing it. Advanced Micro Devices is doing it. Microsoft is doing it.

Apple Computer isn't.

What's Apple not doing? It's not -- at least so far -- moving toward an anti-customer embrace with Hollywood's movie studios and the other members of the powerful entertainment cartel.

Unlike Intel and AMD, the big chip makers for Windows-based computers, Apple hasn't announced plans to put technology into hardware that could end up restricting what customers do with the products they buy. Unlike Microsoft, Apple hasn't asserted the right to remote control over users' operating systems.

The era of Digital Rights Management, commonly called DRM, is swiftly moving closer, thanks to the Intels and AMDs and Microsofts. They're busy selling and creating the tools that give copyright holders the ability to tell users of copyrighted material -- customers, scholars, libraries, etc. -- precisely how they may use it. DRM, in the most typical use of the expression, is about owners' rights. It would be more accurate to call DRM, in that context, "Digital Restrictions Management."

But Apple has taken a different tack in its rhetoric and its technology. As I said in an introduction to a panel I moderated Tuesday at a conference in Santa Clara, Mac OS X, Apple's modern operating system, is becoming, whether by design or by accident, a Digital Rights Management operating system where the rights in question are the user's rights -- and they are expansive.

Now, the music and movie industries have been attacking Silicon Valley and the technology companies for some time. But they've reserved particular venom for Apple among the major computing-platform organizations, and have been witheringly contemptuous of Apple's ``Rip, Mix, Burn'' advertising that describes the process of converting music CDs to MP3 files, which can be loaded on CD-ROM disks and, of course, Apple's own iPod MP3 player.

It can't get much clearer than that. There's much more in the full column from Mr. Gillmor, and I encourage you to read it, to share it, and to post it up at your company's bulletin board. The Wintel hegemony is working hard not to give you the tools to be creative, or to use your computer to manage your digital world, but rather to make the entertainment companies happier. It's disgusting, and it's shameful, but it's reality.

Mr. Gillmor also talks about how you can use Apple's built-in DVD software to play a DVD from your desktop, a must for getting through many movies on the road, and wonders whether or not Apple would be forced to pull that ability. That's the flip side of all this. As the Wintel hegemony ingratiates itself to the entertainment conglomerates, Apple, and Mac users, could find themselves on the outside looking in. Only by making your views understood through liberal use, or non-use, of your pocketbook can we avoid that future. Don't buy copy protected CDs, don't buy electronic books that limit where you can play them, don't pay for streaming content that restricts your ability to play it back where you want to, and as Mr. Gillmor doesn't actually say, don't buy Wintel.

I am not naive enough to think that Apple is on a one-company crusade against the evil media companies, but Apple's public statements jive well with my own thoughts. The company has said that it feels that people ought to be trusted to use their legally bought music where they want to. In other words, it is not Apple's job to police us, and it is not right to assume we are pirates before we even get the opportunity to use our digital media. That's an approach, however, that is directly contrary to groups like the RIAA and the MPAA, which says we are not to be trusted, and must have our rights dictated to us, and controlled by them. Which approach do you prefer?