It's not illegal. Apple either has permission from the rightsholders for the music they offer, or a statutory right to offer it, and doesn't offer the music for which they don't have permission or a right.

Well, looks like /. ate and posted an incomplete post of mine. I guess I won't try writing any posts from my phone in the future, if their UI is going to be this crappy. Let's try again, with a few revisions:

I think she's calling for a bit too much out of Apple.

Apple is a hardware company; any products or services they offer other than hardware are only relevant to them because they think it'll help them sell hardware. Apple also has a justified complex regarding self-sufficiency. More on that presently.

When listening to compressed music on computers began to take off, Apple responded by buying SoundJam MP, modifying it, and releasing it as iTunes. Mostly this was to sell computers -- making sure that people knew that Macs were well-suited to storing, organizing, and playing music files, and could also rip and burn CDs. It was also part of their complex to not rely on third parties to provide important features, and this was now deemed an important feature, with the iPod beginning development shortly after the purchase of SoundJam, and with iTunes to be the syncing software for it.

Releasing a Windows version of iTunes, and selling music via the iTunes Music Store were both just strategies to sell more iPods. Apple figured that some people would buy downloaded music at the 99 cent price point, and that some of them might even be former pirates. The store's label-mandated use of DRM would also help lock customers into the iTunes ecosystem, helping to sell more iPods.

Streaming is just more of the same; because of free streaming, many people who would buy music, or who would pirate music, have flocked to listen to music legally for free (at the expense of having to use bandwidth to stream, not having offline copies, and losing some degree of choice in what you're listening to when. Also, ads). While the iPhone is now more important than the iPod, Apple likes having people locked into the iOS ecosystem. They like having people buy iOS devices, on which music listening is still a core feature (and will continue to be, e.g. with the CarPlay platform). Streaming has become important, and like all important things, it can't be left in the hands of third parties. Therefore Apple must provide music streaming.

But music streaming is a crappy business. Almost all the users stay in free tiers; a mere handful actually pay. Apple's plan is to draw users in with a free time period and then hope for a good attach rate when the time comes for users to either cancel or pay to subscribe. I doubt that Apple will get more than 10 million paying customers (and therefore will only get revenues of around $200 million their first year, and around $300 million in later years after accounting for payments to rightsholders). Frankly, they can find more money than that in their couch cushions. Apple isn't interested in streaming for how profitable it is (read: it really isn't). And I'm sure that they know that in the absence of free streaming, most people will go right on back to pirating music again (with some returning to the iTunes Store, which suits Apple fine).

The whole point of Apple's streaming service therefore is just to keep their hand in, and to prevent a potential rival from being in a position where Apple is so dependent on the rival that the rival has power over Apple.

So can Apple pay rightsholders during the free period? I'm sure they can afford it. Although it makes no economic sense for Apple, as it would cost over $20 million per million free users, and with low attach rates expected, this could easily run over a billion dollars in payouts for a business expected to generate far far less than that. It's frankly not important enough to them to do it. Putting up with Taylor Swift whining at them, and rightsholders loudly complaining that the world is no longer stuck in the 80's and early 90's, is not too big of a cross to bear.

Apple's options other than a free trial period are a free tier, or no free anything. We already know what Swift thinks about the former. The latter is the plan that Tidal is pursuing, plus a higher subscription rate. I don't think it's going to fly. Whether or not it is a legal substitute, piracy is a real substitute, and can't be ignored. If music costs too much to get, people will gladly pirate. Hell, they'll often pirate just for the joy of it. And for a lot of people, any amount of money out of their pockets is too much. Tidal will not be able to reverse the tide of piracy, and asking Apple to follow in its footsteps will neither change the reality of the music industry nor convince Apple to actually do it, given the relative unimportance of legal music for them at this point.

So by all means, she has a right to complain. But I don't see the numbers working out in a way that will put any force behind her complaints. The music industry will have to collapse further, and be rebuilt anew, before it can become viable again, if it ever can.

Regarding Apple's complex about self-sufficiency, it's due to a history of sudden but inevitable betrayal. In 1978, Apple licensed Microsoft BASIC (renamed Applesoft BASIC) because Apple never got around to finishing floating point routines for their own BASIC. The license was for 7 years. The renewal came up in 1985, at a time when Apple still relied on the profits of the Apple II line, all of which had Applesoft BASIC in ROM. Apple hadn't ever gotten around to making a perfectly compatible new BASIC, which meant that MS had them by the short hairs. Luckily, all MS wanted to renew the license was for Apple's BASIC for the Macintosh to get canceled, which it was.

Later, MS again had great power over Apple, because Apple needed MS Office to be available for the Mac, and MS has both used this as a sword and also never quite made it as good as the Windows version. Now Apple has made their own little office suite just to have some alternative available. (It's not quite a substitute, but it's something, especially for casual users)

Then as Netscape collapsed, Apple needed a good web browser, and had to make a deal with MS for IE. The ultimate response for that was for Apple to write their own browser, Safari.

The original (Google-based) Maps program for the iPhone started as just a demo for scrolling, IIRC. It rapidly became an invaluable feature, but Google became a competitor, and withheld new features seen on Android's version of Maps from the iPhone. Therefore Apple had to develop its own Maps program. (And should've seen this coming as early as 2008)

Why did Apple get into the ebooks business? Because Amazon dominates it, and Apple saw that the iPad might make a good ebook reader. Therefore Apple had to have its own alternative option, not to seriously compete, but to make sure that Amazon couldn't kill off the iOS Kindle app, thus harming iPad sales to people who wanted to read ebooks on iPads.

Ginning up a rival to Spotify & co. is just more of the same.

I don't know, a cup of tea _and_ a biscuit when they wake their Chinese employees up at 3 in the morning for an 18 hour shift to accommodate another one of Steve Job's last minute whims? Seems pretty generous by today's standards.

The success of Net Neutrality certainly had a role in making the bureaucrats bold enough to fine AT&T.

of crap they were going to do anyway that they're blaming on the evil govmint and their nasty nasty net neutrality. I've long since noticed businesses doing this; blaming every evil thing they do on gov't regulations because if only they'd just leave us alone to innovate we'd play nice. Didn't happen in the robber baron era and it's not gonna happen in my life.

video on my phone can be 240p and it looks fine. 480p looks like high def to me (I'm old, sue me). Compressed 480p video with 128kbps audio is generally 5 megabytes a minute. What I"m getting at is that these networks are looking like they'll have the capacity to do away with caps. Now if we can just get enough people to believe that and demand their government do something about that. Not sure about Europe but here in America there's so much anti-gov't sentiment that might never happen :(.

It won't be discredited anymore than any of the other miracles of religion are. For this kind of stuff to be discredited you need journalists with cameras and travel options.

is the thought that a large organization (public schools) could potentially have finger prints for every single person in the country with the exception of a few rich kids who go to private schools where room and board are included in the crazy, crazy fees.

Couldn't we just stop being petty bastards and just give out free food to kids at school? Food is not expensive in America. All this bitching about budgetary constraints is just another example of the middle class and poor at each other's throats...

Square finally gave into the fanboys for the FF7 remake? They've resisted it for years because they didn't think they could make money at it, and with how pricy modern graphics are I tend to agree. Maybe Sony backed it as a marketing stunt...

If a person on minimum wage gets fined it's almost always a speeding ticket, which is usually $300 minimum ( and $500 if it's excessive, like what AT&T was fined for).

I think the grandparents numbers are a bit off. Min wage is $7.25 hr. About 15% of that goes to taxes that no poor person can get out of (even accounting for earned income credits which is really meant to offset other taxes the poor pay). It's about $6.16/hr take home (profit) or about $37 bucks.

So if we were to fine AT&T the way we fine the poor it would be about $1.3 billion, give or take.

But OTOH the poor person didn't make any profit from speeding (unless you want to count getting to their shitty job as "profit", but that's just being a vindictive jerk if you're gonna do that). The reason us libtardos want to find Corps way, way more than the pleabs is so that it _hurts_. You have to fine them more money than they made doing the illegal activity or they're going to do it again. They have to, since it's profitable and corporations have a legal requirement to do whatever's most profitable for the shareholders (they really do, look it up).

See, that $500 bucks _hurts_ the guy at McDonalds. It might even be what turns him into a hobo when he can't pay his rent. At the very least he's not going to do _anything_ except work and eat (and not much of that) for the next 6 months to a year. He'll remember the pain of losing that money and think twice about speeding. Let's give AT&T that feeling. Then maybe we'll stop seeing crap like this happen.

The real world is complex, often too complex to define without introducing tonnes of loopholes. So instead of making an unenforceable law that mega corps run roughshod over you set broad standards defined by legal presidence. If your goal is a just society with a high quality of life it's great. If your after slaves in everything but name? Not so much.

there's a world of difference between the very, very violent crime you just described and the relatively non-violent muggings and pickpocketings that go on. Crooks know this. They know if they ever do anything really out there to someone with money that the cops come down on them like a ton of bricks. Sure, they might get away, but all their friends and family will suffer during the police beat down.

It's probably not the best way to control crime and prevent social unrest, but it's how we do things here in America. In the rest of the world I don't know if they do the same, but I'm pretty sure they do in the UK at least.

I see I touched a nerve though, didn't I? Feel free to go on ignoring the advantages of wealth and the disadvantages of poverty. The rest of us living in the real world will read this comic and keep trying to do something about poverty besides make ourselves feel better about ignoring it.

She got way more than she paid in. Everybody except the rich does. That's because one of the dirty little secrets of social security and Medicare is that they're socialist programs. The whole thing about her "paying" for it b was cooked up to get libertarian types like her to accept the v help the desperately needed. If you'd had a decent history prof in college you'd know this

Obesity is most common with the working poor. It's not too surprising. Cheap junk food and TV is about the only pleasure they have left what with smoking being a no-no