I've got to say, after reading it, it's bullshit. He claims that Apple would instantly and wholeheartedly embrace DRM-free music if the music companies would allow it. But of course Apple loves the system currently in place. For every iTunes-store music/video that you purchase, it becomes that much harder for you to switch to a different player. With iPods, and now AppleTV and even the iPhone, they can sell a lot of hardware, that only they can sell, that encourages you to buy from the iTunes store, which makes it that much harder for you to switch. That advantage would go away if iTunes content was sold DRM-free.
Either you didn't read the article thoroughly, or you didn't "get it".
It's been known for a while that the average iPod has only about 23 iTunes bought songs on it. Nothing new there. Anything else can be moved around. Jobs is right. 23 bucks worth of music won't keep anyone on one system.
If Apple wants to show that it will embrace DRM-free music in a heartbeat, why not sell all the indie stuff without DRM? The fact that they don't shows a hypocrisy right there.
It's possible that they can't. without reading the contracts between Apple and the big four, we don't know if that was specified.
Quote:
That's not to say that the handful of EU states aren't being hypocritical in not trying to beat down other DRM systems at the same time. I think that the only other one they could beat on is the one for the Zune, and that hasn't gotten there yet.
Quote:
I am still not buying their line that the licensing makes FairPlay vulnerable to being broken from the fact that the secret is in the hands of multiple companies. It doesn't make any difference. DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are all licenced DRM systems that have been cracked through reverse engineering, not from insider information. PlaysForSure hasn't been illegally decrypted that I remember, and that is licensed to possibly dozens of companies.
Playforsure has been broken as well.
But, he is right, even if it isn't the strongest argument. The more hands the code is in, the easier it is to be broken.
What makes you think musicians wouldn't want DRM protection?
Yes, look at Metallica. Greedy sons of bitches, with all of their supposed counterculture disguise. Musicians are no different from anyone else. They are in it for the money.
Blessed be our iLeader's all-or-nothing ultimatum that covers His Ass while pointing the figure at the evil wizards at the record companies and the worthless leak-prone "FairPlay wanna licensees" . Pure mastery.
Blessed be our iLeader's all-or-nothing ultimatum that covers His Ass while pointing the figure at the evil wizards at the record companies and the worthless leak-prone "FairPlay wanna licensees" . Pure mastery.
Yes, look at Metallica. Greedy sons of bitches, with all of their supposed counterculture disguise. Musicians are no different from anyone else. They are in it for the money.
That would be interpreted as sarcastic if it came from anyone other than melgross.
I snuck into (well, sneakily gatecrashed - it was brilliant, I'll have to tell you some other time) the Australian after-party for the Australian premiere of I, Robot. With director, Will Smith appearing, a whole bunch of who knows who (really, there were only a few famous US and Australian faces...), and DJ Jazzy Jeff rescued from obscurity for a brief moment to spin for about 2 to almost 3 hours at the after-party.
Look, the real secret to the Creative Industry is the money, at the end of the day. Melgross certainly knows this. Intelligence, creativity, and "craft skills" will get you to a certain point. Then comes pulling in the dough and schmoozing your way around at more 1337 levels. Also, what becomes important is your style.
Whatever that style may be - mainstream ickiness of Justin Timberlake, angry rebellion of Pearl Jam, smooth vibes of Boyz2Men, irreverent Brit-Pop to metal and "death-metal" which apparently is still reasonably alive after all these decades.
I must say though that Will Smith is either an actual nice guy, or somewhat guilt-ridden. When he appeared at the after-party, he signed some autographs and entertained pictures, etc, with a whole bunch of screaming teenage girls, presumably winners off a radio show or something. Then, for a good 5 minutes, he just stood in front of JazzyJeff, and just grooved, facing JazzyJeff, his back turned towards the main crowd. After "Shake The Room" (gawd I'm showing my age, but some of you will know what I'm talking about), it's clear whose career really took off. Like really. And maybe someone's a bit guilty about it... Or at least aware of it.
Nah, I was just trying to be funny to cover the fact that I think Steve is really, really spot on, though very, shall we say, brilliant, if in a crafty (not necessarily in a bad way) way.
It's an Australian thing. If you really like someone because they're a bit funny and different, you try and make fun of them. Jim Courier did a lot of commentating for the local TV national broadcaster Channel7 during the Australian Open. He ended up a bit confused at the end of it all, because Channel7 "paid him out" a little - that is, made fun of, in a kind of "obscured admiration" way. Jim Courier asking Maria Sharapova what kind of men she liked though was, well, his asking for it...
The most accurate thing I think Steve said was about licensing FairPlay to a whole bunch of people and then cracks being released in the wild very rapidly and soon you've got your whole music collection cracked. I can totally see this scenario play out. Honestly. After the whole ReArm-2099 (Year2038 overflow activation-disable hack) for Vista. After well, seeing what's on BitTorrent the past 2-3 years.
No I do think Apple is ready to be done with DRM. The iPod is essentially a multi-media player it does not matter where the media comes from. With Apples multiplying device offerings the content can be received from anywhere, there isn't much reason to lock people only into iTunes Store.
I think it cuts both ways. Steve is saying this to broadcast a pro-competitive message to fed(heh, Freudian slip)... I mean, fend, off more attention against Apple.
But I think he's pissed at the major media conglomerates, particularly in expanding iTunes Movies to more studios, and expanding Movies and TVShows to iTunes Stores globally. He's done a hell of a lot of negotiating, and while slowly working, he's still pissed. He needed/wanted to come out and say, look, these are the assholes, not iTunes+iPod.
In the unlikely event that the world goes DRM-free and Iraq is a stable and low-crime state by 2010, Apple is willing to play in this space. I mean, OSX is DRM-free. iLife, iWork, etc, a lot of that is DRM free, at least from a software point of view (I know, slightly different because we are talking about media files, but anyways...).
That would be interpreted as sarcastic if it came from anyone other than melgross.
I snuck into (well, sneakily gatecrashed - it was brilliant, I'll have to tell you some other time) the Australian after-party for the Australian premiere of I, Robot. With director, Will Smith appearing, a whole bunch of who knows who (really, there were only a few famous US and Australian faces...), and DJ Jazzy Jeff rescued from obscurity for a brief moment to spin for about 2 to almost 3 hours at the after-party.
Look, the real secret to the Creative Industry is the money, at the end of the day. Melgross certainly knows this. Intelligence, creativity, and "craft skills" will get you to a certain point. Then comes pulling in the dough and schmoozing your way around at more 1337 levels. Also, what becomes important is your style.
Whatever that style may be - mainstream ickiness of Justin Timberlake, angry rebellion of Pearl Jam, smooth vibes of Boyz2Men, irreverent Brit-Pop to metal and "death-metal" which apparently is still reasonably alive after all these decades.
I must say though that Will Smith is either an actual nice guy, or somewhat guilt-ridden. When he appeared at the after-party, he signed some autographs and entertained pictures, etc, with a whole bunch of screaming teenage girls, presumably winners off a radio show or something. Then, for a good 5 minutes, he just stood in front of JazzyJeff, and just grooved, facing JazzyJeff, his back turned towards the main crowd. After "Shake The Room" (gawd I'm showing my age, but some of you will know what I'm talking about), it's clear whose career really took off. Like really. And maybe someone's a bit guilty about it... Or at least aware of it.
No, I wasn't being sarcastic. I know the music industry very well over four decades. Just like anything else, it's about the money.
No matter how folksy, or counterculture they are, almost all artists are in it for the money. Getting a record deal from one of the majors, or a label owned by one of the majors is the biggest prize in the industry.
No musician wants to play their music in the dives they will play in otherwise. A long time ago Black Sabboth was asked what their dream was (this was just after their first hit album). It was that they never had to go on tour again, could just record their music, and get their royalties. Nothings changed, except for mega stars who make hundreds of millions from a worldwide tour once every two or three years.
Three paragraphs starting with a "no"! That's a record for me. But it shows the negitivity I feel about the whole thing.
If anyone looks, they will see that the concern about DRM falls two camps amongst musicians.
With (very) few exceptions, the sucessful ones are all for it, and the unsucessful ones are all against it.
Is that surprising? It shouldn't be.
The ones with the largest back catalogs hold DRM dearest.
even if apple DID want drm, i would bet my left foot that it was the record execs who demanded it first
after all, we know from numerous quotes how these execs feel about their customers: they hate them and regard them as the enemy way to do business, gents. thank god punk rock ethics still exist in some parts of the music biz. i haven't bought a cd from a big label in about 10 years music companies are irrelevant these days since there is no need for a middle man anymore. they are fighting to justify their existence
If I was running an independent label and decided to sell music at iTunes I would try and see if I could sell it DRM free. This is really a way for smaller labels to lead the way for the big guys.
Blessed be our iLeader's all-or-nothing ultimatum that covers His Ass while pointing the figure at the evil wizards at the record companies and the worthless leak-prone "FairPlay wanna licensees" . Pure mastery.
Call bullshit all you want, but you have to agree that the entire iPod/iTunes ecosystem is mixed, in that it currently thrives on a little DRM and a lot of unprotected content. Steve says that himself. I have a feeling that he's confident enough in the design of Apple's players and store to expect users to still reach for it even when they don't HAVE to.
You can buy cheaper music players today than the iPod. You can buy cheaper computers than Macs. But why don't we? Because we like what we get for what we pay.
Emusic and such offer cheaper music than the iTunes store. yet I still shop at the iTunes store. Why? It's simple, it's fast, and it's well integrated into the rest of my digital life. None of that would change if iTunes store content went unprotected.
I have to agree with you there. Since the birth of Mac OS X, Apple has been using a lot of open standards and competing with how slickly they implement them.
I'd say that DRM is more of a pain in the arse for Apple than it helps them ship iPods. I'd say that DRM hinders a lot of uptake of the iTunes Music Store. I for one won't buy from iTunes because of DRM. I probably would if there wasn't any DRM in it and I suspect that a lot of people hold this view. I do buy from bleep.com which sells DRM-free mp3s.
I had a thought - what do you think would happen if Apple removed all the "big four" content from the iTunes Store and offered "independent" label stuff DRM-free?
Would Apple lose any iPod sales? Not measurably, I think. There are many considerations involved in choosing which device to buy, the availability of legal online music from the "big four" for the device is way down near the bottom of the list.
Would Apple lose out on profits at the iTunes Store? Yes, but the store only operates just over break-even anyway, so it wouldn't be exactly painful.
Would sales at other online stores rocket? Doubtful, as their offerings won't work on iPods.
Would piracy rocket? Probably.
Then Apple could offer the "big four" a choice: re-offer their content on the iTunes Store with no DRM, or don't offer it at all.
I doubt it. Its just Apple/Steve telling the Europeans to stop whining about DRM if they are unwilling to pressure their own companies to discard DRM which they are not willing to do. So its simple America bashing again.
To use an American term - Bullshit!
If Apple want to operate in Europe they shouldn't expect us to put up with the crap Americans are prepared to put up with and Americans should quit whining that we have a different set of values and culture that isn't based on corporate capitalism. You wouldn't go round someone else's house and stick your feet up on their table, eat their fridge contents and fart on the sofa because that's what you do at home.
Apart from that, your claim that we are not willing to pressure the record companies over DRM is patently false...
There's still ongoing investigations over price fixing between European states and investigations into selling restrictions across boundaries - something that's against the law in the EU.
Jobs' "It's the record companies fault" is just him dodging the bullet. It's quite clever as it puts the ball in the record companies court. And he's probably right too. Unfortunately the record companies today seem to have replied with the second option - open up Fairplay rather than the third - Destroy all DRM!!!
So what will happen is the first - the status quo.
The difference being that in fighting any moves from Europe to open up the market, Apple will now just tell them to go annoy the record companies. And that's probably a good thing provided that Jobs isn't spinning a yarn when he says the record companies are the ones forcing DRM on people.
That's not to say that the handful of EU states aren't being hypocritical in not trying to beat down other DRM systems at the same time.
Can we kill the Europe thing here please?
There are currently NO European states trying to beat down DRM. Not one single European government is trying to change Apple's or ANYONE else's DRM system.
So far, the only Europeans calling for DRM's downfall are consumer groups based in Norway, France, Germany and the Netherlands IIRC. These are all consumer groups just like say, Greenpeace is a consumer group.
The only legal challenge to Apple comes from Norway's consumer ombudsman. That's a non-governmental organisation independent of the government who protects consumer rights. A Norwegian consumer body complained to their ombudsmen who is threatening action. They also explicitly mentioned other online music stores including MSN.no - Microsoft's Norwegian music store.
The revolt against DRM is consumer led, not government.
There are currently NO European states trying to beat down DRM. Not one single European government is trying to change Apple's or ANYONE else's DRM system.............The revolt against DRM is consumer led, not government.
I agree that people should quit bashing Europe.
But you are wrong about it all being consumer-led: In France (where it all originated last Fall), the government was the prime mover -- last I looked, the French House and Senate (which passed the law), and the Constitutional Council (which amended it) are, indeed, government.
But you are wrong about it all being consumer-led: In France (where it all originated last Fall), the government was the prime mover -- last I looked, the French House and Senate (which passed the law), and the Constitutional Council (which amended it) are, indeed, government.
It was a private bill, not government sponsored. The original would have been far reaching but it got watered down in consultation such that France gave the record companies the right to waive the requirement on inter-operability. ie. if Universal (owned by Vivendi - a French company) tells Apple they don't want the iTunes songs to be interoperable with other systems, they don't have to.
Ball back in the record companies court.
The original law did not require that Apple removed DRM either.
Funnily, at the time Apple PR were on record as saying the original law as written amounted to 'state sponsored piracy'. I wonder what changed Apple's mind in the last 6 months?
It was a private bill, not government sponsored. The original would have been far reaching but it got watered down in consultation such that France gave the record companies the right to waive the requirement on inter-operability. ie. if Universal (owned by Vivendi - a French company) tells Apple they don't want the iTunes songs to be interoperable with other systems, they don't have to.
Ball back in the record companies court.
The original law did not require that Apple removed DRM either.
Funnily, at the time Apple PR were on record as saying the original law as written amounted to 'state sponsored piracy'. I wonder what changed Apple's mind in the last 6 months?
To a good extent, probably all of our opinions and the rest of the iPod fan base.
Comments
Was it just me or did Steve sound so much saner and less megalomaniacal than he does in Keynotes - and much less of a jerk than he does in interviews?
If he keeps this up he can publish a book, "Meditations."
Maybe it could be carried around everywhere, as a sign of brand loyalty: "The Little White Book."
... and we'll all chant quotes from our 'dear leader'
I've got to say, after reading it, it's bullshit. He claims that Apple would instantly and wholeheartedly embrace DRM-free music if the music companies would allow it. But of course Apple loves the system currently in place. For every iTunes-store music/video that you purchase, it becomes that much harder for you to switch to a different player. With iPods, and now AppleTV and even the iPhone, they can sell a lot of hardware, that only they can sell, that encourages you to buy from the iTunes store, which makes it that much harder for you to switch. That advantage would go away if iTunes content was sold DRM-free.
Either you didn't read the article thoroughly, or you didn't "get it".
It's been known for a while that the average iPod has only about 23 iTunes bought songs on it. Nothing new there. Anything else can be moved around. Jobs is right. 23 bucks worth of music won't keep anyone on one system.
If Apple wants to show that it will embrace DRM-free music in a heartbeat, why not sell all the indie stuff without DRM? The fact that they don't shows a hypocrisy right there.
It's possible that they can't. without reading the contracts between Apple and the big four, we don't know if that was specified.
That's not to say that the handful of EU states aren't being hypocritical in not trying to beat down other DRM systems at the same time. I think that the only other one they could beat on is the one for the Zune, and that hasn't gotten there yet.
I am still not buying their line that the licensing makes FairPlay vulnerable to being broken from the fact that the secret is in the hands of multiple companies. It doesn't make any difference. DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are all licenced DRM systems that have been cracked through reverse engineering, not from insider information. PlaysForSure hasn't been illegally decrypted that I remember, and that is licensed to possibly dozens of companies.
Playforsure has been broken as well.
But, he is right, even if it isn't the strongest argument. The more hands the code is in, the easier it is to be broken.
What makes you think musicians wouldn't want DRM protection?
Yes, look at Metallica. Greedy sons of bitches, with all of their supposed counterculture disguise. Musicians are no different from anyone else. They are in it for the money.
Blessed be our iLeader's all-or-nothing ultimatum that covers His Ass while pointing the figure at the evil wizards at the record companies and the worthless leak-prone "FairPlay wanna licensees" . Pure mastery.
Do you disagree?
Yes, look at Metallica. Greedy sons of bitches, with all of their supposed counterculture disguise. Musicians are no different from anyone else. They are in it for the money.
That would be interpreted as sarcastic if it came from anyone other than melgross.
I snuck into (well, sneakily gatecrashed - it was brilliant, I'll have to tell you some other time) the Australian after-party for the Australian premiere of I, Robot. With director, Will Smith appearing, a whole bunch of who knows who (really, there were only a few famous US and Australian faces...), and DJ Jazzy Jeff rescued from obscurity for a brief moment to spin for about 2 to almost 3 hours at the after-party.
Look, the real secret to the Creative Industry is the money, at the end of the day. Melgross certainly knows this. Intelligence, creativity, and "craft skills" will get you to a certain point. Then comes pulling in the dough and schmoozing your way around at more 1337 levels. Also, what becomes important is your style.
Whatever that style may be - mainstream ickiness of Justin Timberlake, angry rebellion of Pearl Jam, smooth vibes of Boyz2Men, irreverent Brit-Pop to metal and "death-metal" which apparently is still reasonably alive after all these decades.
I must say though that Will Smith is either an actual nice guy, or somewhat guilt-ridden. When he appeared at the after-party, he signed some autographs and entertained pictures, etc, with a whole bunch of screaming teenage girls, presumably winners off a radio show or something. Then, for a good 5 minutes, he just stood in front of JazzyJeff, and just grooved, facing JazzyJeff, his back turned towards the main crowd. After "Shake The Room" (gawd I'm showing my age, but some of you will know what I'm talking about), it's clear whose career really took off. Like really. And maybe someone's a bit guilty about it... Or at least aware of it.
Do you disagree?
Nah, I was just trying to be funny to cover the fact that I think Steve is really, really spot on, though very, shall we say, brilliant, if in a crafty (not necessarily in a bad way) way.
It's an Australian thing. If you really like someone because they're a bit funny and different, you try and make fun of them. Jim Courier did a lot of commentating for the local TV national broadcaster Channel7 during the Australian Open. He ended up a bit confused at the end of it all, because Channel7 "paid him out" a little - that is, made fun of, in a kind of "obscured admiration" way. Jim Courier asking Maria Sharapova what kind of men she liked though was, well, his asking for it...
The most accurate thing I think Steve said was about licensing FairPlay to a whole bunch of people and then cracks being released in the wild very rapidly and soon you've got your whole music collection cracked. I can totally see this scenario play out. Honestly. After the whole ReArm-2099 (Year2038 overflow activation-disable hack) for Vista. After well, seeing what's on BitTorrent the past 2-3 years.
No I do think Apple is ready to be done with DRM. The iPod is essentially a multi-media player it does not matter where the media comes from. With Apples multiplying device offerings the content can be received from anywhere, there isn't much reason to lock people only into iTunes Store.
I think it cuts both ways. Steve is saying this to broadcast a pro-competitive message to fed(heh, Freudian slip)... I mean, fend, off more attention against Apple.
But I think he's pissed at the major media conglomerates, particularly in expanding iTunes Movies to more studios, and expanding Movies and TVShows to iTunes Stores globally. He's done a hell of a lot of negotiating, and while slowly working, he's still pissed. He needed/wanted to come out and say, look, these are the assholes, not iTunes+iPod.
In the unlikely event that the world goes DRM-free and Iraq is a stable and low-crime state by 2010, Apple is willing to play in this space. I mean, OSX is DRM-free. iLife, iWork, etc, a lot of that is DRM free, at least from a software point of view (I know, slightly different because we are talking about media files, but anyways...).
That would be interpreted as sarcastic if it came from anyone other than melgross.
I snuck into (well, sneakily gatecrashed - it was brilliant, I'll have to tell you some other time) the Australian after-party for the Australian premiere of I, Robot. With director, Will Smith appearing, a whole bunch of who knows who (really, there were only a few famous US and Australian faces...), and DJ Jazzy Jeff rescued from obscurity for a brief moment to spin for about 2 to almost 3 hours at the after-party.
Look, the real secret to the Creative Industry is the money, at the end of the day. Melgross certainly knows this. Intelligence, creativity, and "craft skills" will get you to a certain point. Then comes pulling in the dough and schmoozing your way around at more 1337 levels. Also, what becomes important is your style.
Whatever that style may be - mainstream ickiness of Justin Timberlake, angry rebellion of Pearl Jam, smooth vibes of Boyz2Men, irreverent Brit-Pop to metal and "death-metal" which apparently is still reasonably alive after all these decades.
I must say though that Will Smith is either an actual nice guy, or somewhat guilt-ridden. When he appeared at the after-party, he signed some autographs and entertained pictures, etc, with a whole bunch of screaming teenage girls, presumably winners off a radio show or something. Then, for a good 5 minutes, he just stood in front of JazzyJeff, and just grooved, facing JazzyJeff, his back turned towards the main crowd. After "Shake The Room" (gawd I'm showing my age, but some of you will know what I'm talking about), it's clear whose career really took off. Like really. And maybe someone's a bit guilty about it... Or at least aware of it.
No, I wasn't being sarcastic. I know the music industry very well over four decades. Just like anything else, it's about the money.
No matter how folksy, or counterculture they are, almost all artists are in it for the money. Getting a record deal from one of the majors, or a label owned by one of the majors is the biggest prize in the industry.
No musician wants to play their music in the dives they will play in otherwise. A long time ago Black Sabboth was asked what their dream was (this was just after their first hit album). It was that they never had to go on tour again, could just record their music, and get their royalties. Nothings changed, except for mega stars who make hundreds of millions from a worldwide tour once every two or three years.
Three paragraphs starting with a "no"! That's a record for me. But it shows the negitivity I feel about the whole thing.
If anyone looks, they will see that the concern about DRM falls two camps amongst musicians.
With (very) few exceptions, the sucessful ones are all for it, and the unsucessful ones are all against it.
Is that surprising? It shouldn't be.
The ones with the largest back catalogs hold DRM dearest.
It's not just the music companies.
after all, we know from numerous quotes how these execs feel about their customers: they hate them and regard them as the enemy
Blessed be our iLeader's all-or-nothing ultimatum that covers His Ass while pointing the figure at the evil wizards at the record companies and the worthless leak-prone "FairPlay wanna licensees" . Pure mastery.
Call bullshit all you want, but you have to agree that the entire iPod/iTunes ecosystem is mixed, in that it currently thrives on a little DRM and a lot of unprotected content. Steve says that himself. I have a feeling that he's confident enough in the design of Apple's players and store to expect users to still reach for it even when they don't HAVE to.
You can buy cheaper music players today than the iPod. You can buy cheaper computers than Macs. But why don't we? Because we like what we get for what we pay.
Emusic and such offer cheaper music than the iTunes store. yet I still shop at the iTunes store. Why? It's simple, it's fast, and it's well integrated into the rest of my digital life. None of that would change if iTunes store content went unprotected.
I have to agree with you there. Since the birth of Mac OS X, Apple has been using a lot of open standards and competing with how slickly they implement them.
I'd say that DRM is more of a pain in the arse for Apple than it helps them ship iPods. I'd say that DRM hinders a lot of uptake of the iTunes Music Store. I for one won't buy from iTunes because of DRM. I probably would if there wasn't any DRM in it and I suspect that a lot of people hold this view. I do buy from bleep.com which sells DRM-free mp3s.
Would Apple lose any iPod sales? Not measurably, I think. There are many considerations involved in choosing which device to buy, the availability of legal online music from the "big four" for the device is way down near the bottom of the list.
Would Apple lose out on profits at the iTunes Store? Yes, but the store only operates just over break-even anyway, so it wouldn't be exactly painful.
Would sales at other online stores rocket? Doubtful, as their offerings won't work on iPods.
Would piracy rocket? Probably.
Then Apple could offer the "big four" a choice: re-offer their content on the iTunes Store with no DRM, or don't offer it at all.
I doubt it. Its just Apple/Steve telling the Europeans to stop whining about DRM if they are unwilling to pressure their own companies to discard DRM which they are not willing to do. So its simple America bashing again.
To use an American term - Bullshit!
If Apple want to operate in Europe they shouldn't expect us to put up with the crap Americans are prepared to put up with and Americans should quit whining that we have a different set of values and culture that isn't based on corporate capitalism. You wouldn't go round someone else's house and stick your feet up on their table, eat their fridge contents and fart on the sofa because that's what you do at home.
Apart from that, your claim that we are not willing to pressure the record companies over DRM is patently false...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/01...es_record_biz/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/01...to_put_poison/
And that's just the Reg articles I remember.
There's still ongoing investigations over price fixing between European states and investigations into selling restrictions across boundaries - something that's against the law in the EU.
Jobs' "It's the record companies fault" is just him dodging the bullet. It's quite clever as it puts the ball in the record companies court. And he's probably right too. Unfortunately the record companies today seem to have replied with the second option - open up Fairplay rather than the third - Destroy all DRM!!!
So what will happen is the first - the status quo.
The difference being that in fighting any moves from Europe to open up the market, Apple will now just tell them to go annoy the record companies. And that's probably a good thing provided that Jobs isn't spinning a yarn when he says the record companies are the ones forcing DRM on people.
That's not to say that the handful of EU states aren't being hypocritical in not trying to beat down other DRM systems at the same time.
Can we kill the Europe thing here please?
There are currently NO European states trying to beat down DRM. Not one single European government is trying to change Apple's or ANYONE else's DRM system.
So far, the only Europeans calling for DRM's downfall are consumer groups based in Norway, France, Germany and the Netherlands IIRC. These are all consumer groups just like say, Greenpeace is a consumer group.
The only legal challenge to Apple comes from Norway's consumer ombudsman. That's a non-governmental organisation independent of the government who protects consumer rights. A Norwegian consumer body complained to their ombudsmen who is threatening action. They also explicitly mentioned other online music stores including MSN.no - Microsoft's Norwegian music store.
The revolt against DRM is consumer led, not government.
Can we kill the Europe thing here please?
There are currently NO European states trying to beat down DRM. Not one single European government is trying to change Apple's or ANYONE else's DRM system.............The revolt against DRM is consumer led, not government.
I agree that people should quit bashing Europe.
But you are wrong about it all being consumer-led: In France (where it all originated last Fall), the government was the prime mover -- last I looked, the French House and Senate (which passed the law), and the Constitutional Council (which amended it) are, indeed, government.
http://www.macnn.com/articles/06/08/....takes.effect/
I agree that people should quit bashing Europe.
But you are wrong about it all being consumer-led: In France (where it all originated last Fall), the government was the prime mover -- last I looked, the French House and Senate (which passed the law), and the Constitutional Council (which amended it) are, indeed, government.
http://www.macnn.com/articles/06/08/....takes.effect/
It was a private bill, not government sponsored. The original would have been far reaching but it got watered down in consultation such that France gave the record companies the right to waive the requirement on inter-operability. ie. if Universal (owned by Vivendi - a French company) tells Apple they don't want the iTunes songs to be interoperable with other systems, they don't have to.
Ball back in the record companies court.
The original law did not require that Apple removed DRM either.
Funnily, at the time Apple PR were on record as saying the original law as written amounted to 'state sponsored piracy'. I wonder what changed Apple's mind in the last 6 months?
It was a private bill, not government sponsored. The original would have been far reaching but it got watered down in consultation such that France gave the record companies the right to waive the requirement on inter-operability. ie. if Universal (owned by Vivendi - a French company) tells Apple they don't want the iTunes songs to be interoperable with other systems, they don't have to.
Ball back in the record companies court.
The original law did not require that Apple removed DRM either.
Funnily, at the time Apple PR were on record as saying the original law as written amounted to 'state sponsored piracy'. I wonder what changed Apple's mind in the last 6 months?
To a good extent, probably all of our opinions and the rest of the iPod fan base.