EU Officials Cautious on AntiTrust Issues

An anonymous reader writes "News.com has a piece up looking at reactions from EU officials to the iTMS antitrust case. The individuals involved are wary of cracking open the DRM that protects the music sold at the iTunes Music Store." From the article: "One of the most outspoken government advocates on the issue is Norwegian consumer ombudsman Bjorn Erik Thon, who said he would act soon depending on how Apple responds to a letter the government had sent the company. If Apple can require an iPod for songs via iTunes, then music, book and film companies might restrict their products to specific players too, he said."

Larger scope

[SuperKendall]

Sounds like Sony and Blu-Ray.

Your thinking is too limited. This sounds exactly like DVD and CSS, or Blu-Ray/HD-DVD and AACS. In either case unless you sign agreements to support those DRM standards you are not able to build devices to play that media.

The movie companies MIGHT restrict the products to certain players? They already do today and have for years!!

If I were Apple I'd write back: "Dear Sirs; either ban CSS as well or get off our case."

Ummm... Those industries already do that.

[JorDan Clock]

There are tons of DRM'ed music, books, and movies. I'm fair sure Sony required people to convert their music into their ATRAC format for their early "MP3" players. eBooks often can only be read by specific programs on certain platforms. DRM protected DVDs can only be played on certain DVD players (albeit, this point is much less restrictive than many others.). Sure, you can (supposedly) only play music obtained from ITMS through an iPod or iTunes, but honestly, is it that big of a restriction? If you buy an iPod, you're likely to want digital music, and since not everyone is a pirate, they want to buy it. So Apple sets up a service for their product. There are other services that are less platform restricted, and some that are completely free of platform restrictions. Didn't the Prismiq have a media download service? I wouldn't be surprised if that media could only be played on the Prismiq. Was that available in Europe?

Re:Ignorant Government Idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also possible to strip the DRM from the iTunes AAC files with JHymn [hymn-project.org]. However, there aren't many players that play AAC files, so even without the DRM, you're pretty much SOL

Of course, mentioning this product violates the DMCA, which violates my right to free speech, but I'm posting anonymously anyway.

Re:Ignorant Government Idiots

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

You forgot:

4. Play music on selected phones.

That said I don't think companies that intentionally restrict consumer rights above and beyond what copyright law does should be given the protections of copyright. It should be an either or proposition. Either copyright your song and consumers are obligated to follow the rules about not copying it, but you cannot impose any additional rules, or don't copyright it and impose your own technological restrictions, but if someone breaks your DRM they can do anything they want with it including republish.

I think what Apple is doing now is wholly necessary, but only because they are competing against the windows media format which is illegally bundled with a monopoly OS. I'm all for the EU making it illegal to further restrict use of copyrighted media by either format and the return to sane, standard formats that will entail. All I really ask, however, is they apply whatever standard equally to both iTunes and Windows Media.

Re:Media restricted to prefered player only

[kupan787]

Actually, the first gen blu-ray players wont be able to play back the quad layer blu-ray disks currently in development. So if you buy a first gen Sony player, you can't play every blu-ray disk.

Sony allows you to play every blu-ray disk to every blu-ray device with every blu-player. It is an unfortunate consequence there are not so many players.

But, Apple allows you to play every iTunes track with every iTunes player (any of the 1G-5G iPods, the Moto ROKR and upcoming iTunes phones, or on my Mac or PC). So hw is it any different? Further, comparing to other companies in similar boats, Apple offers more variety than buying a PS3 (you can only play PS3 games on a PS3), or the Xbox360 (you can only play Xbox 360 games on an Xbox360). So I am not seeing your point...

YOU can listen to it wherever you want, whenever you want.

Also, I can listen to the music I purchase on my iPod, on my computer, on my cellphone (ROKR), in my Car (either via burnt CD, or direct iPod to AUX input), on my home stereo (again, same way as via Car). Hell i can even play it on another music player (convert first to MP3, then load that MP3 on to said player). Also, there isn't someone standing over my with a timer (like teh subscrption music based services) which will delete my tracks if my subscrption runs out. I can listen to my tracks as many times as I want, as long as I want, whenever I want.

Re:I'll be worried about this

[Golias]

Well, the PSP is made by a major movie company. Yet, oddly, you can still buy any UMD movie on other formats.

Likewise, you can buy the same albums you see in iTMS from your local CD store, or in some cases from other music download sites. So what, exactly, is the problem?

I used to buy a lot of music from iTMS, but since I've started using my computer as the main playback device on my living-room stereo, I've come to demand lossless formats. Besides, if you want the full album it's usually a better deal to hunt down a used CD.

(I now generally only buy iTMS songs if it's just one tune that I want, and I'm mostly going to be listening in the car or some other setting where I don't care about hi-fi. For example, I recently downloaded "All the Time in the World" by the Subdudes. It's a great summer crusin' song, but I don't give a crap about the rest of the album. So that amounts to about three or four songs a month, which is a fairly small fraction of my music purchases. If iTMS starts offering lossless formats, I might go back to buying large quantities from them, since it is a hell of a lot more convenient than driving to the store... but for now I'm mostly off the bandwagon.)

Ombudsman in reality a Microsoft Shill

[Been on TV]

We understand what the Norwegian Ombudsman and his department is saying, but in reality his is acting as a Microsoft shill. His department has never lifted a finger to make sure Microsoft DRM protected material is available to non-Microsoft customers in Norway.

Best example of this is the government, (mandatory) license financed "Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation" (public TV and radio) that publish all their video content in Microsoft DRM protected format. The Ombudsman has done nothing to ensure that this material truely is available to the public; only to Microsoft customers. There are other public institutions in Norway as well that publish Microsoft DRM protected content only.

If the ombudsman is eager to enforce Norwegian legislation in this area, he should first make sure the very government institutions and structure his department is a part of is in compliance with the law, before starting to go after one private company.

Re:No, you don't, and few people do.

[Fred_A]

I too don't understand what the "hassle" is...

Ripping a CD is just starting one of the many CD ripping utilities, clicking once (possibly twice depending on the utility), waiting for the disk to pop out and archiving it. That's what I do whenever I buy a new CD. Then I synced my ~/Media/sound/MP3 tree with my iRiver H320 (now lost —whine— waiting for a Creative replacement) every now and then.

Once every 3 months, I have to enter the track info myself because they don't seem to be on the freedb (or because I don't like the way they have been entered). Ok, that's sort of a minor hassle.

Maybe in Windows it's really horribly complicated but somehow I doubt it...