U.S. Backs Apple's iTunes DRM 327
breun writes "The U.S. has asked foreign governments to consider the effects of interfering with popular new technologies, pointing to recent scrutiny of Apple's iTunes Music Store as an example of bad judgment. The U.S. Justice Department's antitrust chief Thomas Barnett cited recent foreign proposals to impose restrictions on Apple's iTunes service as an example of strict regulation which could discourage innovation and hurt consumers." From the Washington Post article: "In prepared remarks, Barnett said the scrutiny of Apple 'provides a useful illustration of how an attack on intellectual property rights can threaten dynamic innovation.' Barnett said Apple should be applauded for creating a legal, profitable and easy-to-use system for downloading music and other entertainment via the Internet."
Or maybe it's just a GOOD government in action... (Score:3, Insightful)
one word makes a difference (Score:5, Insightful)
Fixed that for you, Barnett.
No sovereignty for you! (Score:4, Insightful)
Only the USA can liberate things, people and oil.
No country is allowed to break USA-created-DRM.
Now I understand... (Score:1, Insightful)
Too easy to see... (Score:4, Insightful)
Now I've seen everything... (Score:4, Insightful)
I call BS (Score:3, Insightful)
How does openness and interoperability between different devices discourage competition? Of course it discourages Apple from donating money to "a top U.S. antitrust official"
And how exactly am I as a customer being hurt by being able to play your music where I want? I'll probably get a heart attack from overenjoying myself.
Re:Or maybe it's just a GOOD government in action. (Score:5, Insightful)
To throw your own argument back in your face - since when is artifically limiting my ability to use something I bought as I see fit a "right" of some company?
Re:I Smell Something Fishy... (Score:5, Insightful)
They're right (Score:4, Insightful)
You, the consumers, should have no obligation to go into contract with anyone if you don't like the conditions. But the people offering stuff have exactly the same right. So if they choose to use terms like "we have the right to fuck you in the ass if you purchase this music file" then they have every right to do so and if you accept those contracts you gonna have to put up with something you most probably don't like. But this is your CHOICE.
This hole topic is just not a problem. If you don't like big corporations using DRM to violate your rights (the way you percive them) then don't use their services. It's not like we're talking food or other essential stuff, just ignore their offering and they'll learn by themself. Any other behaviour either encourages them or weakens your standpoint.
It's better like this: (Score:3, Insightful)
Third party manufacturers cannot make Wi-Fi or UPNP streaming devices since they can't decrypt the DRM, programmers can't write plugins to dynamically mash-up your favourite tracks, etc etc etc, since Apple impedes your property rights with their digital restricitons.
Re:They're right (Score:5, Insightful)
thin end of the wedge. GM foods are basically IP, and I see no reason you couldn't try to make the precedent from one area fit another.
Re:Or maybe it's just a GOOD government in action. (Score:3, Insightful)
The french itunes DRM fiasco, which spawned this whole debate, wasn't about stealing music. It was about buying some shit on itunes, then having the right, as a consumer, to play it on devices other than the freaking ipod. The original law in france was that companies (such as apple) would have to "share DRM secrets to allow competitors to create compatible devices, eventually allowing other music services to offer music for the most popular music player" (from macnn.com).
Of course, don't let that stop your knee-jerk "goddamned hippie pirates want everything for free" trolls.
yer stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't like Apple's DRM, go buy a CD. It's not like Apple is a label and is keeping music from being released for other platforms (yes, I meant it that way).
(Someone correct me if I'm wrong - is Apple Computer doing exclusive media deals with anyone?)
Finally, if you don't like Apple's DRM, then burn the tunes to a regular CD and do whatever you want with it. (someone is going to say "yeah, but that's not really CD quality audio", to which I say "yeah, but CDs aren't vinyl quality audio")
Re:Or maybe it's just a GOOD government in action. (Score:2, Insightful)
DRM doesn't intrinsically interfere with fair use, because non DRM'd media is not affected. The license, not the technology, is what harms your rights.
Q. Since when is it the right of the company to do anything?
A. Since I agreed to it.
Re:They're right (Score:5, Insightful)
Bold statements considering you couldn't put such a clause in contracts. Believe it or not there are limits to what a contract can do. The one exception is military service but that contract isn't your standard intellectual property license. They do not have the right to restrict my fair use of their product no matter what their license agreement is. I never signed a contract for any music I've ever bought so we don't even have to worry about that.
The solution to the problem would be pretty simple if everyone would just stop purchasing content that is DRM protected. This is not a realistic goal however so please, find another method. Getting 300 million people to agree is impossible. Hell, even getting a million people to agree on something is quite difficult. This method would never work here in the real world. The solution is to break the DRM time and time again until they realize the method won't work and they actually need to give people an incentive to move to new formats when the old format is not deficient. Why should I pay for music in digital format when I already have a cd with music stored in a digital format? It doesn't make sense. If I vegetable oil I am not required to use it to grease a pan or use in a cake. I can do whatever I want with it including throwing it into a diesel engine. I don't need their permission to render in into another substance. It's a reasonably bad example in terms of copyright but fair use exists and DRM is a blatant violation of that fair use.
???Net Neutrality??? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I Smell Something Fishy... (Score:3, Insightful)
The Music Industry demanded DRM in order to prevent piracy. Apple went right along with that because it means that if people want to use the biggest (legal) online music store, they have to get an iPod if they want a portable music player. Apple won't allow their music to be distributed without DRM any more than they'll license Fairplay to their competitors (which I believe is what was being demanded in European countries, not that Apple sell DRM free music).
Re:Or maybe it's just a GOOD government in action. (Score:0, Insightful)
Your argument "DRM doesn't interfere with fair use is, because non-drm'd media is not affected." is complete BS. DRM interferes with fair use on the object to which it was applied, the only way your logic would work is if there was a secondary choice of equal value/options available to which DRM was not applied. Your argument is like saying, these apples taste JUST like these oranges, and as such cease to be apples.
Re:I Smell Something Fishy... (Score:3, Insightful)
What? If they had a choice? Umm, newsflash: They have a choice. There is a side effect to that choice, but choosing to do something that is wrong because you make money at it is not the same as not having a choice.
Re:They're right (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Or maybe it's just a GOOD government in action. (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't in the iTunes license, but rather in the customer agreement to create an iTunes Store account. iTunes is fully functional without the ability to purchase music from the iTunes Store; it's not like Apple requires you to get an iTunes Store account... well, unless you want free tracks from them, or want to buy something from them. But that's definitely not a shrink-wrap or click-wrap deal.
Irony can be pretty ironic (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly. When the DMCA was passed, it open a floodgate of lawsuits by the recorded music manufacturing industry against its own consumers. This consumed valuable resources, and stifled the market's ability to force the recorded music vendors to innovate and come up with new products that their consumers wanted to buy.
I can't find any fault with this statement of his.
Re:Call me stupid.... (Score:2, Insightful)
iTunes DRM allows us to legally download music (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of you will claim that the solution is to purchase non-RIAA music, which is fine. There are some RIAA bands I enjoy, however, so for me that's not a solution. Obviously in the case of iTunes, DRM is actually helping consumers. It may not allow us to do everything we want, but it gives us one additional choice in how we get our music.
Re:Or maybe it's just a GOOD government in action. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:They're right (Score:2, Insightful)
You're right with that. But there is a simple solution for everyone who really thought about DRM. Boycott it. So 80% of people will accept it and major corporations will continue to use DRM to screw those 80%. SO WHAT? They'll have to live with it. Maybe the other 20% can make up a new market where you don't have to accept those terms (and probably we'll have much, much better music. I don't see losing the opportunity to listen to Britney Spears as a real loss.)
Re:Or maybe it's just a GOOD government in action. (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple created Itunes and Ipod to work with each other, and people KNOWING THIS agreed to buy them. Property rights are causal. The reason corporations/peopel create things is because they can control them/profit from them. If they could not control/profit from them, the creation would have been nonexistent or greatly diminished.
Don't be so obtuse. These kinds of anti-intellectual property rights arguments so often come from those who create nothing.
Re:Call me stupid.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Because most media companies won't release media unless it is DRMed. So no DRM means no media.
Re:oh, certainly (Score:5, Insightful)
Likewise, sampling is legal under copyright. A copyright owner does and should have limits as to how many specifications they can set on the use of their work.
but to me it's also same as getting pissed at GM because a Ford transmission doesn't hook up to it.
To use your metaphore, to me it's like saying that it's illegal to hook a Ford transmission up to a GM car, or to own the tools needed to even open the hood since by opening the hood someone might very well copy the technology inside. Because of course we didn't actually buy a Ford, only the license to drive one, or somthing along those lines. If GM wants to make transmissions for Ford cars, it has every right to do so, even if that means taking apart a Ford to do it. As long as they don't start making Fords, they're in fair territory.
When one company has a near monopoly on Operating Systems or any other tool, then of course it has an unfair advantage in the realm of software production or the production of any product which relies on that first tool. The DMCA is the legal mechanism which secures that advantage.
Re:Or maybe it's just a GOOD government in action. (Score:5, Insightful)
That is a sad, tired argument - and all you can hope with it is the 'repeat it until people believe it' strategy. 'Intelectual property' rights are granted by the state for a limited period of time to encourage creation. In return for this protection, when the time expires the protected content should fall back into public domain so that the state (as in 'society at large') can benefit from them (you know, cross-polination type, or as some say 'standing on the soulders of giants'). DRM prevents that, as it does not have a built-in 'expiry date', effectively preventing the society from receiving any real benefits from allowing DRM. And don't give me that 'no DRM, no creation' crap - culture started well before DRM and Gutenberg's press did not ruin it at all, quite the contrary.
I say that even in the hugely improbable case that the RIAA members go banckrupt from lack of DRM (although the fact that they didn't already should clue one in) - bring it on! It should lower the market access price for many producers of good music (aka artists) that nowadays have to go indie.
Re:Or maybe it's just a GOOD government in action. (Score:2, Insightful)
You mean technologies like LPs, CDs and tapes?
Re:Call me stupid.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I take it you don't believe much in that one then, as it's all about restricting the rights of the consumers for the benefit of consumers. Now, I'm not saying I buy into this argument but: DRM => People buy, not pirate => Authors and Inventors are compensated => Progress of Science and useful Arts => Good for consumers. Hence restricting DRM will harm consumers. Feel free to point out the various flaws in that line of reasoning, but I don't think you can generalize to say that anything that restricts consumers is ultimately harmful to consumers.
Ultimately consumers will drive the market (Score:2, Insightful)
I love going to battle against DRM and fighting for Fair Use and even against the concept of IP and copywrites. However, even if the battle is lost, and the corporations win, and those old farts get their old idea, that information gets them money, backed by government enforement, the consumers will still get to decide in the end and ultimately come out victorious. That's why the GPL came to life, to counteract Copyrights with Copylefts. Don't like that someone is trying to legally prevent you from re-using their program or picture or (information) in a way you see fit? Go someplace else where you have that freedom, like the open source community. I don't want consumers to have to do that, but I think that's where the majority of consumers will head to when the government comes knocking to collect "copywrite infringement funds" for monopolies.
Small example: Look at newspaper comics. Penny Arcade was attacked by the old farts who make some of the comics in newspapers because the Internet has broken down their ability to make as much money as they once did. The Internet is about sharing information, so any market system which heavily depends upon the creation of information is threatened, so they go screaming to the government for help. This has happened many times before in history. Eventually those markets either dissolve or adapt. Hopefully it will happen with this, too, as long as the government isn't successful (and it's impossible to be in this case) in forcing the old market to exist, and by doing so "discourage innovation and hurt consumers". :)
Without DRM (Score:3, Insightful)
If RIAA, did not want to profit from this, there would be many that would.
The younger generation would buy/download online, not get CD's, whether or not the RIAA was selling.
Eventually the RIAA would sell online without DRM like everyone else.
DRM allows the RIAA to keep the old disposible media model (LP-8Track-Cassette-CD), where the consumers keep re-purchasing the same media. Consumers being able to have a "permanent" copy is scary to the RIAA. Copyright extensions and public domain are scary for the same reason. It would force new art/invention/innovation to get profit.
DRM, DMCA, and infinite copyright law are fighting agaist the "printing press like", which is free internet information exchange. No, "free information exchange" does not mean anarchy. There should be regulation that encourages innovation. But 120 year copyrights, and encrypting all information for sale is attempting to reverse free information exchange, and "kill the printing press".
Keep loading their guns. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Or maybe it's just a GOOD government in action. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not convinced that listening to music in its original pristine quality is an inalienable right. When lps were king, as soon as you started listening to the music you bought, its quality started to degrade due to scratches and general groove wear due to mechanical contact. And you couldn't just bring the record back to the store and get a replacement. The quality was about as good as you treated your collection. And if you wanted to back it up, you'd copy to cassette (or reel-to-reel, like my grandpa used to do with all his jazz and polka records) with significantly reduced quality. That analog duplication may be the only way to backup my music collection is now an infringement on my rights? It certainly wasn't 30 years ago. It's when they start to outlaw or heavily regulate the sale of microphones that I'll be worried.
That doesn't make any sense, plus once people buy $500 of ipod only tunes they are unlikely to want to change to a new service, aiding market domination and lack of choice.
Market dominance is certainly an issue. I think it's encouraging that so early in the development of legal downloads that there are at least 3 different major music download platforms: iTunes, playsForSure, and straight mp3. Again, moving between these services may not be convenient or "lossless", but it's possible and, I believe, still legal.
Re:I Smell Something Fishy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Or maybe it's just a GOOD government in action. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, there's a difference between inconvenient and illegal
When you (legally) burn your DRM-protected AAC-tracks to an Audio-CD (from within iTunes) they are converted (without loss) to AIFF-files. Still "pristine" (i.e.: there is no further degradation from the original compression). You can now (legally) convert the AIFF-file to any other (lossless) audio-format, whatever yor player (Zune or what have you) supports. Sure, it's a shlepp, but you're absolutely allowed to do this.
Now compare this to ripping a DVD: You could do something similar, but that would actually be illegal
So (to reiterate): it's not true that you're "not allowed to listen to those [songs anywhere else]" . It's inconvenient, but not illegal.
Re:Or maybe it's just a GOOD government in action. (Score:5, Insightful)
Whatever your feelings on DRM (I personally won't buy anything DRM'd but do own an iPod; I use my CD collection) the regulation goverments are trying to do against Apple isn't whether they should or shouldn't have DRM, but rather whether or not they have to open the iTunes Store to competitors. The DRM would still be on every song.
So now that we are on the same page for whats going on and in Slashdot tradition, I am going to share my unasked for opinion on this subject.
Government to Apple: Hey apple, we know you put a ton of time and money into creating a fully integrated music/media solution for your users and were the first to really get consumers behind you...well how to put this, the other companies, nobody really wants to buy their stuff cause there are no integrated solutions for it. So do you think you could open up your online store and let everyone and their dog connect to it? We realize that this would lose you sales on your hardware which is where you make most (if not all) of your money. We also realize that when joe schmoe can't get his [insert brand] mp3 player to easily work with the store and automatically add purchased media to the mp3 player he is going to call you, despite that fact that you have nothing to do with the support of his mp3 player, thereby costing you more time and money in support. Further we understand that this will affect your image of "just works" because grandma will associate the hassle of getting her music she purchased through your store onto her [insert-brand] thereby causing damage to your image. So Apple, what do you think...you don't mind do you?
Apple to gov: Umm...how about no...
To me it just seems like the other companies (the ones too lazy to try to create their own fully integrated solution) are just trying to regulate their biggest competitor out of the business. What company would want to innovate like this in the future if they then have to open up everything they did to their competitors. It would be much easier to wait for the next guy to innovate and then force them to open up. Hence, resulting in further lack of consumer choice. And remember, if you don't like the choice, you don't have to take it (remember this isn't about DRM being there or not, the goverments aren't proposing getting rid of DRM).
Just my 2c (or 2p for you Euro guys).
Re:Or maybe it's just a GOOD government in action. (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's a suggestion anyway: Offer quality content.
That includes good music, but other things as well - fantastic package art, fanclub memberships, entries in contests, points that could be redeemed for concerts, concert tickets themselves, ringtones, apparel, books, and things of that nature. Make the media more than the audio recording, and people will buy it.
Crippling the audio recording only penalizes those who stay legit. Those who cheat bareley even notice it.
Re:I Smell Something Fishy... (Score:2, Insightful)
In light of the GP's baseless assertion (modded to +4), with such strong evidence as him "thinking" and "doubting", I don't know how you can accept his "evidence" and "proof" any more than that of which you criticize.
Since I personally loathe apple, I am much more supportive of whatever evidence the parent linked to, which i didn't even bother to read BTW.
DRM = vendor lockin and proprietary standards. Thats what it equals, whatever company does it. I don't need any "facts" or fancy "studies" to tell me that.
Re:Or maybe it's just a GOOD government in action. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Or maybe it's just a GOOD government in action. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Or maybe it's just a GOOD government in action. (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry - people have a right to be able to choose the player they play their music on. They should be able to play that music on any player regardless of where it was purchased - anything less is a government mandated music player (or at the very least, government-approved, through inaction).
What YOU seem to be missing is that that's an unacceptable situation. That is why Apple is being scrutinized.
And no, they don't have to open up their innovations and let everyone else profit from them - that's why they license the FairPlay protocol so that other players can implement it. That would be the.. Fair.. thing to do.
Re:Or maybe it's just a GOOD government in action. (Score:3, Insightful)
Amazing how the DOJ has the gall to point to this issue as an example of regulation hindering innovation; strict IP legislation has already held innovation in the field back for the last decade, and the US has been a prime example.
Imagine the applications possible without monopoly based IP... you could have a vast library with all human culture available at the touch of a button. You could navigate through genres, performers, creators, country and culture of origin, you could mix and create and derive and enrich the culture to your hearts content. (Oh, and without the money drains of the RIAA/MPAA corps, we could pay even more creative talent for the same resources we spend today).
Re:Or maybe it's just a GOOD government in action. (Score:3, Insightful)
So, let me throw it back in your face: Since when is it your right to post bullshit to the public without having taken the time to learn or think about the area? ("Bill of rights" and freedom of speech is irrelevant - I'm talking about the moral issue, where you should be self-censoring out of a combination of responsibility and pride in yourself.)
Eivind.