Apple Defeats RIAA and France In Same Day 311
gnat writes "The subheading of the CNN article says it all: 'Four largest record companies defeated in behind-the-scenes battle to charge different prices for songs; downloads still 99 cents'. This comes the same day as France backed down on the posturing over demanding iPod interoperability." From the France article: "Apple, which did not return repeated phone calls, and other DRM holders doing business in France, are likely elated. While the law must still be voted on, the alterations in the legislation signify willingness by some in the French government to honor the rights of companies that don't wish to share their technology with competitors. Senate debate on the bill begins Thursday."
France backs down? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why didn't the submitter go with the more trollish (and lets face it, the comments will decsend to this level in a few seconds) headline the inquirer took: French committee surrenders on DRM law [theinquirer.net]
Let's all remember that while we would normally blindly follow Apple's lead in this, it is a Free software issue [itnews.com.au] as well as being an Apple (yay) vs France (boo) issue.
Like Microsoft (with word documents, SMB, etc), or Adobe (with encrypted PDFs), Apple should not persecute F/OSS users for attempting to interoperate with their products.
The Breakdown & The Irony (Score:5, Insightful)
Being a bass player, I'm concerned about what's left over for the musician. Very concerned.
Weren't all the commercials and marketing schemes out there to make me feel guilty for the musician [nytimes.com] when I illegally share music? Perhaps they should have been showing me pictures of an executive in his Lexus
Half dupe (Score:1, Insightful)
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/01
Aside from the troll clichés and all... (Score:5, Insightful)
So, as much as I dislike DRM, I think theirs was just such a move.
Re:France backs down? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:France backs down? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not persecution... I don't think Steve has a taskforce specificaly to chase Linux users around with sticks (sorry the over use of that word gets to me).
If you choose to buy from ITMS you know exactly what you are getting, and while the argument that there should be Linux support for Apples products is valid that does not mean that everyone gets to whine about it... iPods play
I don't mean to be harsh but we are talking about a recreational item here it's not like iTunes music and iPods serve a vital purpose.
Re:Apple continues to rip off the UK (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The Breakdown & The Irony (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright or other intellectual 'property' has never been for the artists and creators sake. The creators have merely been the excuse, once owning a printing press and being friendly with the crown was no longer considered reason enough to get a monopoly.
Remember, copyright was created to protect publishers from cheap books, not to ensure payment to creative talent.
Re:France backs down? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:France backs down? (Score:5, Insightful)
The real problem is that the RIAA, in all their infinite wisdom, is screwing themselves. They demanded DRM, and now its biting them in the ass. Without DRM, Apple wouldn't have the leverage to dictate the pricing on songs.
Re:France backs down? (Score:3, Insightful)
I do, you presumably do, but not everyone does.
With MS Word, there's no choice, because of monopoly.
No choice? What about OO.org? What you mean is no choice if you have existing documents (the same as someone with an ITMS AAC collection who decides to convert to freeBSD)
Oh - and word was not the MS monopoly, Windows was.
If you want to buy movies, then you have to buy DVD.
Or a video. DVDs do not constitute a monopoly.
Protected PDF, WMA and Fairplay fall into another category.
No they don't, because none of your other examples were monopolies either.
There are other solutions. You don't like iTunes? Go buy the CD. Buy music from Real, or Napster, or listen to the radio.
What if you already have an iTunes music collection?
I don't think Corel released their specs for wordperfect files either.
So what? Corel's files are not protected by DRM - that's what we're talking about here ya?
The monopoly status is what changes the rules.
Maybe for you, but for many otherpeople, DRM is a monstrosity, made worse by a monopoly, but still a monstrosity without one.
I'm getting sick of techies confusing the RIAA... (Score:1, Insightful)
Let me be clear: Apple negotiated with record labels, not the RIAA
Saying Apple beat the RIAA is like saying a prosecuter beat the NRA when it convicted someone of possessing an illegal firearm.
We so want a digital music boogey man, we give the RIAA far too much power and credit for things it has nothing to do with. Look, I don't like them anymore than anyone else here, but understand something, the RIAA doesn't negotiate record deals. They don't sign artists, they don't set the prices of music. They earn their money by colelcting fees from record companies, not selling music.
Re:France backs down? (Score:2, Insightful)
I believe the GP's point was that Apple changed the terms and conditions of what you could do with your music after the purchase was made.
But you're right of course - let's burn the heretic GP for his blasphemous anti-apple ways.
misleading (Score:2, Insightful)
Geez, I never thought I'd see a misleading article attacking record labels on Sladshdot...............
Re:Add This Defeat to the Military History of Fran (Score:5, Insightful)
And if you've watched Stephen Colbert's recent White House press dinner speech, you'll note the only person in the room who had the balls to do that was a French descendant.
It's all sort of silly, anyway... Germans and French share the same common ancestry. The history of warfare in general is that everyone loses... look at the American wars throughout history. We lost most of them. Korea? Vietnam? Moghidishu? We didn't do jack in WW1 and in WW2 we entered the European theater late and fought against outnumbered Hitler Youth and reserve troops while the great bulk of German troops, especially the most veteran and well equipped divisions, were defeated by Russia.
Anyway, point being, it's fun to laugh at France, but maybe this is more of a story of how corporations exert political control than anything.
Trolling? I'll bite ..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple didn't have a choice. You either include DRM or the RIAA won't deal with you. If the RIAA won't deal with you then you don't have an online music store that's going to make any money.
Apple didn't change the "rules" about how you use your music. You can go to the store, buy a CD and do whatever the heck you want with it just like you always could. Now if you buy DRM'd music from Apple's online store then there are some rules in place, but they are among the must user friendly out there. You can share your music with other PC's on your home network. Granted there is a limit, but the average consumer doesn't have 5 PC's. If you make some kind of mistake and authorize too many PC's and can't deauthorize one or more of them for whatever reason then you do have the ability to reset your authorizations. You can burn the files to CD as many times as you want. There is a limit to the number of times you can burn a play list that contains DRM's music. I believe that limit is 10, but if you need to burn more than that the solution is pretty easy. Use another program to burn additional copies of the CD. Alternatively you could delete the play list and recreate it. DRM is a fact of life forced on Apple by the RIAA. If you don't like the rules, go buy the CD instead. Apple offers a service. You can get only the tracks you want, almost instantly, at $0.99 cents a track and in exchange for that service you agree to some rules. They don't force you to buy their music.
Apple didn't sue the students for posting rumors. Apple sued the student for knowingly soliciting and publishing trade secrets and profiting from it. Think Secret does sell advertising on it's website and does turn a profit. California is one of approximately 44 or 45 states that have adopted the Uniform Trade Secrets Act. That statute makes it wrongful to acquire or to publish without authorization information you know or have a reasonable basis to know is a trade secret. I don't agree with their tactics but to say that Apple simply sued a student for posting rumors is a vast oversimplification made for the purposes of furthering your argument.
A company acting in it's own self interest so it can turn a profit? Blasphemy! I know, let's do away with all private and public companies and let the central government plan everything to do away with this evil notion known as "profits". Oh wait, that's been tried several times and each and every time it's been tried it's failed, innocent people have died and human rights have been trampled on. Not that pure unregulated capitalism is any better, I'll take regulated capitalism with social safety nets in which companies and people are mostly free to ... gasp ... act in their own self interest and try and turn a profit and where consumers are free if they don't like a particular company to .... gasp ... not buy their products.
Re:France backs down? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:France backs down? (Score:2, Insightful)
There are a couple of problems with your rant:
Apple spread DRM.
And they did it at the behest of the content owners. It was the difference between having an online store (and a way to move their music player hardware) and having nothing but a couple of crappy creative commons songs. And as soul-less as DRM restrictions may be, at least Apple pushed for one of the least restrictive DRM schemes available. To wit: their content does not expire after a certain number of days or a certain number of plays; it does not require you to keep a subscription to a service in order to keep your music alive; it does not limit your right to burn CDs -- just the order in which you burn the list.
Apple change the "rules" about how users can use their music (number of CDs a song can be burnt onto was reduced) using the DRM and software updates, even when the songs have ALREADY been purchased by the users.
See one of the child posts, but my understanding is that Fairplay is versioned so that those songs that were bought with certain rights MAINTAIN those rights. Further, the limits on burning songs to CDs are not set at the individual song level, it's set at the playlist level -- in other words, i can burn any song to CD as many times as i want to; i just can't use the exact same playlist more than ten times.
Apple sue students for posting rumours about their products on the internet.
Unfortunately, that's the climate of business in the US today; businesses have an obligation to their shareholders to protect their competitve secrets. Of course, for every rumor that lands the rumor-monger in court, there are dozens that don't. The difference is probably in how big of an impact such a rumor can have on a company's competitiveness, and how stiffly the NDAs were worded with the source who originally leaked to the rumor site.
It appears that any evil you want to ascribe to Apple is really either a problem you have with how business in the US is run in general, or by taking the dimmest view possible of their actions without considering the constraints under which the company operates. At any rate, they can hardly be viewed as MORE evil than other large, convicted monopolists who have done far more restrictive things with their technologies.
Re:France backs down? (Score:4, Insightful)
The changes have not been terrible, however. FairPlay has been around for a few years now and this is the worst example you can come up with? The restriction is completely trivial to anyone's "personal use" of the music. Slight changes to a playlist resets the counter on the number of burns. Hell, add a "song" that has two seconds of silence and you've got a new playlist. It is just not worth complaining about. How many copies of a playlist do you need?
Moreover, you conventiently forget to mention that Fairplay was at the same time liberalized to allow a person to play their music purchased from the iTMS on five computers instead of three, something that is helpful for people who want their music at work and on multiple machines at home. It was a trade, in other words, that liberalized a restriction that people *did* face and tightened one that people rarely face. Evil Apple.
It is a Free Software Issue. (Score:5, Insightful)
It is also a free market issue - unlike most other media formats and DRM schemes (CSS, HDMI, WMA) which can be licensed by any party under RAND terms, Fairplay is not available for license. This is helping Apple to create a monopoly, by sheltering it from competition due to legal restrictions, rather than basing it's success solely on the merit of the product (which is does have).
Lastly Microsoft didn't get to be a monopoly (in it's OS) through illegal means. Like all other OSes at the time, they lived and died with the system it was written for. The IBM PC had the advantages of people wanting to use the same machine as at work and later of low costs due to commoditization. The other PC's couldn't compete with this, and thus died. Microsoft rose to dominance because the IBM PC rose to dominance. Everything else (even their very real illegal acts) is noise.
Frankly, I have always thought our antitrust laws were pretty stupid. We give companies huge amount of anti-competitive powers through "IP", and practically unrestricted mergers, and then wait until they inevitably become monopolies (or oligopolies) to enforce a bunch of hollow antitrust laws that do little more than waist time in court. Why wait until someone is a monopoly to start caring about promoting a free competitive market?
Lastly, and most importantly, it is a consumers rights issue. If I have legally obtained documents, I will view them as I please - whether the person trying to restrict me from doing so is a monopoly or not is of no consequence.
</rant> (haven't had my cherios this morning
Why the bill was diluted, and Apple's DRM benefits (Score:4, Insightful)
Secondly, Apple's use of DRM is helping the anti-DRM crusade. In a bit of DRM judo, Apple has basically hijacked music DRM from the industry that meant to controll it and is using that power to dictate exactly how the online music market is to be run. Eventually studios will wake up and realize that they would be fine selling music without DRM, and indeed it's the only way to break free of Apple's grip over distribution. Then we'll not need DRM anymore as studios just sell FLAC and MP3 online, what we all wanted in the first place. Also at that point you'll be able to use any player you like again and not just iPods (so extra pressure on teh labels to move to a DRM free model will eventually come from Microsoft).
So smile when Apple mentions FairPlay, 'cause they are the ones saving you from the REAL DRM world we might all have been living in without them.
Re:Nice troll. Try again. (Score:2, Insightful)
There's the speculation.
Neither you nor I has any idea what Apple Computer and Apple Records agreed to or not; even if they did agree to something like that, the whole disagreement could hinge on how they defined "music business" within the contract.
You're making it seem like it's somehow a cut-and-dried issue when in reality it almost certainly is not.
Re:France backs down? (Score:3, Insightful)
Again...I don't understand what vendor lock in is involved here. No one forces you to use the iTunes store with the iPod. You can easily put musical and video content on the thing from other sources. Got CD's? Rip them and listen to them. You do have a choice here...hardly a monopoly on what content you can play on an iPod, nor any other player available out there for that matter.
Plenty of source material out there for whatever player you want to use...
Re:The bigger they are the harder they fall (Score:4, Insightful)
For the record, I'm an Apple fanatic that pops wood whenever I see a Mac, and my butthole gets wet at every keynote.
What sort of monopoly are we talking about? A monopoly on music distribution? A monopoly on music players? In regards to Music distribution, Apple would need to wrest control of the content from the RIAA cartel. Certainly, Apple has helped destabilize the music cartel's control of music distribution, but those wheels were set into motion long before the iTunes Music Store (iTMS) by the original Napster and later filesharing technologies.
What's really going to kill the RIAA cartel is artists getting out from under their control. Apple has helped here to a degree, but the real empowerment to creators has, continues to, and will come from file sharing. I think that it's almost impossible for any one company to wrest control of the content from the content creators. If Apple is going to maintain it's dominance in paid online music distribution (or even if it's going to survive), it will need to accommodate the artists, not try to control them. If Apple, or anyone else, attempts to become the "new boss, same as the old boss", I have a feeling that many artists will just release their material as mp3s and accept that there will be a certain amount of unauthorized copying. That's if they strike out on their own and leave the RIAA fold.
If Apple is going to continue to thrive, they're going to have to partner with content creators, not own them.
As far as the iPod goes, I hope they will continue to dominate the market, but there is no guarantee and there is little chance that they will ever exercise a long term monopoly in this segment, despite their DRM lock in. The field is changing too fast, technology changes too fast. We haven't yet seen a true iPod killer, but that doesn't mean we won't. There's too much in play, too many nascent technologies, too many devices converging. (My best guess is that when we do see an iPod Killer, it's going to come out of left field, and no one will have seen it coming.)
Re:France backs down? (Score:3, Insightful)
WHEW!! $400? That's quite a chunk of change. I just cannot see spending that much money on an inferior format (lossy) set of music. I'd much prefer to buy it in lossless format, rip it to a lower quality for my iPod or other portable...but, have the fullest version possible for home audio play.....and not be DRM'ed.
I'm just curious, really...do you not have a good home audio system to listen on? Do you only listen to the iPod for music? I see it is a different mindset, and I'm honestly wondering about how someone would spend that much money on a song collection they know is not transferrable and of lower quality than other versions of that content that are available...