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Apple to License iTunes Fairplay DRM?
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True... but Apple's policies aren't the best
Errr.... a poor comparison. Licensing is not the same as stealing now is it?!!! If it was licensed, then the ability to play fairplay content on other devices with legal content wouldn't be stealing.
My approach is consumer choice, which more often than not, creates competition ( good for both businesses and consumers ) and thus lowers prices, raises quality and innovation.
If companies could make versions of the iPhone then the results would be:
(a) cheaper
(b) more flexible ( i.e., allow developers freely to produce 3rd party software )
(c) may not have such a nice GUI, but (a) and (b) would be more than sufficient.
(d) not tied down to Cingular, for you americans.
If Apple is seen to being a monopoly / abusive then they will be at some point to be forced to license fairplay ( or any other dominant technology ).
No, but its an guess, and I'm guessing more people would buy AppleTV because it could play more content than the limited range of now, and as it stands, the content is extremely limited if your outside the u.s. There is very little point in buying it at the moment, for that reason. We don't know when movie and tv content will be added to non-u.s stores - SJ says 2007.... maybe, maybe not.
Adding DivX and other formats would make AppleTV much more useful and appealing and doesn't limit you to just Apple format ( yes, I know it supports the usual such as mp3 ).
The iPod supports far less codecs than many competitors, no WMA, no FLAC, no OGG, ... Yet, it has managed to take the lion's share of the market.
One reason is that it does support MP3, another is that it's SIMPLE. Many of the other devices that support every codec under the sun pay a usability price for that support.
AppleTV is similar, it supports MPEG-4 which is an open standard codec unlike DivX. As well as the somewhat less portable H.264.
B
...And the backlash and begun against Fairplay.
The reason iPod is so successful so because of its usability and probably, looks amongst others.
The iPod wouldn't be any less usable if it supported WMA, DIVX etc. It would still have the same GUI and same range of existing features.
BTW, I do think the iPod is a very good product, I've owned two - 2nd and 5th generation. I just hope that Apple do license out Fairplay. It will help counter microsoft DRM, who have no intention of developing that on a Mac and thus a lot of content is unavailable for that reason.
The reason iPod is so successful so because of its usability and probably, looks amongst others.
The iPod wouldn't be any less usable if it supported WMA, DIVX etc. It would still have the same GUI and same range of existing features.
BTW, I do think the iPod is a very good product, I've owned two - 2nd and 5th generation. I just hope that Apple do license out Fairplay. It will help counter microsoft DRM, who have no intention of developing that on a Mac and thus a lot of content is unavailable for that reason.
I disagree. Implementing and supporting a given feature is a real cost that Apple avoids by keeping the feature set open, yet limited. This in turn keeps it simple for the user and avoids things like "This MPEG-1 video doesn't play on the iPod, but that one does, why?"
You'd need a larger ROM for the firmware and would be introducing a bunch more places where the software can fail. Why bother?
B
I didn't say steal, I said download. Lots of people would like to download a free copy of OS X for their PCs. But it would be incredibly stupid for Apple to choose to make it available as a free download.
Which is my entire point. The fact that a lot of people want FairPlay to be opened does not mean it is good business to do so. Your argument (that what consumers want must be the best thing to do) is not necessarily true.
But there is plenty of consumer choice. You don't have to buy an iPod. You don't have to download from iTunes. There are lots of other options.Stella said:
Consumers have chosen to buy from Apple because they prefer the Apple products, restrictions and all.
And all of Apple's R&D would be flushed down the toilet, as everybody else releases identical products with no need to make back the cost of years of research.Stella said:
It's not a monopoly to be the sole supplier of a single item.Stella said:
There are dozens of manufacturers of music players and dozens of suppliers of music. Nobody is forcing anyone to buy Apple products. As a matter of fact, it's more difficult to use Apple products, because Windows includes all of the software needed to play music from WMA-based stores, but iTunes has to be explicitly downloaded and installed.
The fact that Apple is the only supplier of iPod-branded players and iTunes-branded music does not make them a monopoly. Do you think Ford has a monopoly because they are the only supplier of Mustangs?
Apple could add dozens of different CODECs. You want DivX, someone else wants WMV, someone else wants DV, etc, etc. And each one would require yet another license fee and another royalty payment, plus new R&D costs to integrate it, and new support costs to fix its bugs. And when we're done, this device will cost $500 instead of $300. How many people would buy it then? You say everybody would want these new features (which is questionable to begin with), but how many would want to pay more for them when these same people are balking at the existing $300 price?Stella said:
I don't think it's likely that Apple will license Fairplay to 3rd parties until they've squeezed all of the internal growth they can out of it. I don't think we've reached that point yet.
Digital hookups for peripherals might be an exception, but I don't think so. The peripheral market is doing just fine under the current regime.
If sales level out, or a real competitor arrives on the scene, you might see a change-- but with the iPhone looming, Apple creeping up the top sellers list, and iPod sales still hot I don't think it will happen soon.
Digital hookups for peripherals might be an exception, but I don't think so. The peripheral market is doing just fine under the current regime.
If sales level out, or a real competitor arrives on the scene, you might see a change-- but with the iPhone looming, Apple creeping up the top sellers list, and iPod sales still hot I don't think it will happen soon.
And you don't seem to know the difference between communism and fascism...
this is a good start. Now if Apple would only find a way to allow record companies to put DRM on their CD's but allow ripping to itunes.
this is the DRM Licensing the labels have been asking for and need!
this is the DRM Licensing the labels have been asking for and need!
At the risk of throwing this thread way off topic:
Communism-- a political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs.
Socialism-- a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole. policy or practice based on this theory. (in Marxist theory) a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of communism.
Fascism-- an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. (in general use) extreme right-wing, authoritarian, or intolerant views or practice.
Ok, maybe dictatorial would be a better adjective? Communist certainly doesn't fit here though... As many people do, I think you're confusing communism, which is an economic system, with the political systems that attempt to implement it-- the biggest examples having been fascist of dictatorial.
Other companies HAVE been making "versions" of the iPhone for years, they are called SMARTPHONES.
They are cheaper, way more flexible, are not tied to Cingular, and their GUI's aren't nearly as nice, in fact most of them are HORRIBLE.
Basiclly you want Apple to be just like all the other companies, making cheap low quality products with crappy user interfaces.
If you want that then you are in luck, all you have to do is stop buying Apple products and start buying all the other low quality junk on the market.
And by adding support for a format most used by DVD rips, you expect apple to get support from more movie studios how?
I almost totally agree with you Stella, in fact I probably do agree totally.
I loved what IBM did back in 1995. They were losing $4billion a quarter, and Gerstner said to every division "Stop buying from other IBM divisions! Act independently and buy from the best source! (All things being equal, use IBM)". The turn around was quick. The PC department no longer bought memory and hard disks from within IBM unless IBM was a good choice. Departments that weren't producing good stuff but were living off internal sales became IMMEDIATELY obvious and died (or were killed). Basically, Gerstner enabled market forces to impact within IBM to help him clean it up.
In general, I think Apple should be totally open. iTunes store should work with any music app & any players. iTunes should connect to any store & any player. iPod should work with any ... you get the point. And Apple+Apple+Apple should give the BEST experience. This allows the best of music stores/apps/players to rise and all to compete independently. I also believe Apple provides excellence in these 3 areas and thus would do well.
However - it really depends on where you believe the competition is. If it's against MP3 players and download sites etc, then my 'model' provides better competition. If the cd based music system is the competition, then Apple are competing at a higher level - Apple iTS/iTunes/iPod against a behemoth, and it may be a necessity to have Apple's vertical integration to compete effectively.
It may just be a matter of different requirements and different times.
There are pros and cons to opening up (especially a controlled opening up). Microsoft has just kicked sand in its partners faces by competing against them, so now may be a good time.
Marketed right, Apple could gain a LOT of good will by opening up in some ways. Hell... I'm still waiting for the finale to the "I'm a PC" guy ads, where the PC guy says "I'm actually a HP, and I run OSX now too!"
Exactly Apple's problem! Make friends with the movie studios (protect! protect!), and give customers what they want (open! flexible!). So we don't rip DVDs, we don't have a DVR, we don't play DiVX. But Apple is trying to open up how we use what we've got, allow streaming to AppleTV, multiple iPod sync etc.
The question is will Apple "allow" added codecs (like Quicktime can do now), and an effective Elgato solution. This keeps Apple "clean" and the studios happier..... unless Apple is promising to lock the box totally to keep them happy.
Completely Off Topic. However ...
Funny how you post to point out that Americans tend to confuse socialism with communism (although I'd add also confusing both with the Soviet System), then confuse communism with authoritarianism.
While communism might have an authoritarian bent which might rightfully be compared to Apple, the other aspects of communism tend to not match very well at all. All of this is rather silly, of course, as governmental models and the method by which a company achieves its desire to make money are entirely different beasts (how many companies do you know of committed to consumer choice of products they don't produce or make money off? I know of none.).
But, if you're going to draw an analogy, draw the right one.
Motorola operated under a similar regime you describe above and it tore itself apart. It lost all hope of synergy and started acting like a conglomerate, and then more like a family on a TV sitcom where the divisions disdained each other and began competing against each other. Eventually it spun itself into a bunch of companies (Freescale, On, etc).
When IBM opened the PC architecture, it made Microsoft and the clone makers rich but really didn't do much for IBM...
When you're successful, you press your advantages. In the music market right now Apple has great design, reasonable DRM conditions, a huge installed base, and high margins. The worst possible thing they could do is open both sides of the equation and allow others to sell content with Fairplay and others to play content locked with Fairplay. That would give music vendors access to their installed base, and kill their iPod margins simultaneously.
Even opening one or the other is probably foolish at this point-- both sides of the business are growing and maintaining marketshare. When Apple can license Fairplay to device manufactures for more than their profit margin on iPod, they should open that up. When iPod sales are threatened by other music stores, or when the market is ready to switch to online content at the expense of CDs more broadly, then they should license to music sellers.
At this point, it isn't really hurting consumers that much-- it's not like there are hoards of people saying "if only I could play my iTunes music on a Zune, I'd totally buy one...".
The disarray in the Microsoft camp right now is exactly the reason not to open up right now-- the confusion is only going to serve to increase Apple's presence and Apple doesn't need to sacrifice exclusivity.
When Apple wants partners, they'll be there purely because of the size of the market Apple commands. They don't need to time it to a particular abuse by Microsoft, and the Zune debacle isn't going to add much incremental value to what Apple has to license anyway.
IBM didn't open the PC architecture. They decided it wasn't worth much, used external suppliers for everything. Others simply copied it. Ooops.
Years later, in unrelated circumstances, Gerstner's moves saved IBM.
God.. just let us have some content for the AppleTV for non-US people
Well, they did in the sense that they made the interfaces open and later licensed their proprietary technologies. They tried to regain some control when they introduced Microchannel, but it was too late by then. IBM could have killed the clone market the same way Apple did if they chose to, but they were more interested in setting a standard and relying on their brand to keep them a major player. They succeeded to some degree, but the commodity players were the big winners.
I'd expect the same result if Apple suddenly opened their closed systems, including iPod/iTunes.
Don't forget that the Apple ][ that the IBM PC displaced was the original open system, you could get the schematics for the entire system and easily build your own boards for its expansion bus.
Only with the //c and IIgs did they start making Apples more closed.
B
*License* Fairplay DRM? lol. What a wrong direction.
I will gladly pay real money for DRM-free content.
I will not buy DRM content ever.
I will not buy DRM content ever.
I will not buy DRM content ever.
If more people acted as I do on this matter, we would not be bothered with DRM content any longer. As great as Apple is, I can only hope that competitors such as Amazon and Yahoo start selling DRM-free content and gain enough marketshare to force Apple to do the right thing.
Your dollar is your vote, and I'm very surprised people in this forum would vote for DRM by buying even one single thing from iTunes. I'm dying to give Apple my money to buy DRM-free stuff, but they don't seem to want it.
--Sirlin
I will gladly pay real money for DRM-free content.
I will not buy DRM content ever.
I will not buy DRM content ever.
I will not buy DRM content ever.
If more people acted as I do on this matter, we would not be bothered with DRM content any longer. As great as Apple is, I can only hope that competitors such as Amazon and Yahoo start selling DRM-free content and gain enough marketshare to force Apple to do the right thing.
Your dollar is your vote, and I'm very surprised people in this forum would vote for DRM by buying even one single thing from iTunes. I'm dying to give Apple my money to buy DRM-free stuff, but they don't seem to want it.
--Sirlin
Except their failure to license Fairplay to content providers is hurting the Mac side. US Mac users don't have to look at all their local media companies gradually locking them out like those in the rest of the world do. When Gartner release their market share figures for last quarter, you will see a massive difference between the US and Europe. Some of that is the stores, but the rest is down to the US-centric attitude of Apple management with regards to the services they offer users.
Over the past couple of weeks, we've now been able to add Channel 4 to the growing list of UK broadcasters standardising on Windows DRM (Sky, ITV, plus countless radio stations). ITV have more projects in the works too, none of which can be accessed by UK Mac users. Apple could have cleaned up in DRMd media streaming and purchasing. Instead they've handed Microsoft the market on a plate. Ballmer's predictions that Apple will eventually fall down to 5% will come true unless Apple act.
As a matter of fact, they sued the early cloners (like Compaq), but they lost the suit, because Compaq managed to clean-room reverse-engineer the BIOS chip (which was one of the few proprietary components.)
IBM never licensed the proprietary parts of the original PC. They were cloned in a way that IBM couldn't prevent.
Yes, they tried to change that with MicroChannel, but as you said, it was far too late. There were so many PC-clones by then that the market responded by saying "then we won't buy IBM anymore".
Not really. Apple was able to kill the market by refusing to release updated firmware to the clone makers, by making firmware that is very difficult to reverse-engineer, and by actively prosecuting those who redistribute the firmware.Analog Kid said:
IBM never had this option. BIOS quickly left IBM's control when Compaq was able to legally reverse engineer it, and when companies like Phoenix and AMI started selling their own BIOSs to everybody in the world.
Ditto for the operating system. Apple was, and still is, the sole source of Mac OS. If someone makes a clone, Apple can tweak Mac OS to not run on it.
IBM never had that control over any PC operating system. IBM gave Microsoft full license to sell MS-DOS for any non-IBM computer. OS/2 had a similar license. Other operating systems (CP/M, Xenix, etc.) were completely third-party products.
With no control over the firmware or the OS, there is no way IBM could regain control over the PC market. In hindsight, they lost that control before the first PC ever shipped - when they allowed Microsoft to retain control over DOS. Of course, they had no way of knowing that at the time.
And I'm sure you already do. They're called CDs.
I buy products because they offer what I want for a reasonable price, not to make a political statement.Sirlin said:
I buy the occasional iTunes track because the DRM terms are acceptable to me. I don't buy DRM content from other vendors because their terms are unacceptable (and because they don't play on my Mac or on my iPod.)
When new kinds of content comes out with new DRM terms, I'll make my purchasing decisions based on how much those terms affect me, and if I find the conditions acceptable.
I don't have the time to be bothered with fighting a war against the whole concept of DRM.
(BTW, have you ever bought a DVD? There's plenty of DRM in there too, you know.)
I've NEVER understood the reasoning on why people support Fairplay. It's *SOLE* purpose is to lock you into a product for life. Nothing more, and nothing less.
Does Apple have the "right" to do this? Sure
Is it RIGHT? No. Hell no.
People have given the "excuse": Don't buy the iPod then. I do not buy that argument at all. It's silly, close-minded and ultimately DOES NOT ADDRESS the truth of the matter. DRM is simply bad for consumers. Does this make me a communist because I believe that media should be open to all? No, and it's extraordinarily silly to even begin to think that way. DRM stifles competition. DRM destroys the possibility of public domain. DRM causes ENORMOUS issues in archiving. DRM ultimately prevents an artist to truly grow in a digital world.
"So don't buy it!"
So I should be prevented in buying a product I deem cool?
"When you buy an iPod, then you are accepting Fairplay DRM."
No, I don't. I don't think I should buy an "inferior" product and deal with "Plays for Sure" just because so I can play my digitally bough music (which I do not do, btw) on my XBox360. I want to be able to play my IPOD on my XBox 360 without worry about certain songs *not* playing.
It doesn't matter how you twist the issue, but the reality is people view their bought music as music, and see things that it should be able to play on any medium that PLAYS music.
"You bought tapes when they were big, then CDs, and now iTunes Music. How is this any different?"
BECAUSE IT'S DIGITAL. Sorry, but I can view my MS Word text files on my Mac, PC, and Linux boxes. HOW IS MUSIC ANY DIFFERENT? It isn't. It's a digital file on MY COMPUTER on MY IPOD.
Sorry for this tirade, but all of these so called "excuses" are simply that: Apologizing for Apple. Doesn't play with me, and it never will.
Do I love Apple? Yes I do, and still do. Do I think their draconian closed policy of DRM is good? Heck no, and never will.
w00master
Does Apple have the "right" to do this? Sure
Is it RIGHT? No. Hell no.
People have given the "excuse": Don't buy the iPod then. I do not buy that argument at all. It's silly, close-minded and ultimately DOES NOT ADDRESS the truth of the matter. DRM is simply bad for consumers. Does this make me a communist because I believe that media should be open to all? No, and it's extraordinarily silly to even begin to think that way. DRM stifles competition. DRM destroys the possibility of public domain. DRM causes ENORMOUS issues in archiving. DRM ultimately prevents an artist to truly grow in a digital world.
"So don't buy it!"
So I should be prevented in buying a product I deem cool?
"When you buy an iPod, then you are accepting Fairplay DRM."
No, I don't. I don't think I should buy an "inferior" product and deal with "Plays for Sure" just because so I can play my digitally bough music (which I do not do, btw) on my XBox360. I want to be able to play my IPOD on my XBox 360 without worry about certain songs *not* playing.
It doesn't matter how you twist the issue, but the reality is people view their bought music as music, and see things that it should be able to play on any medium that PLAYS music.
"You bought tapes when they were big, then CDs, and now iTunes Music. How is this any different?"
BECAUSE IT'S DIGITAL. Sorry, but I can view my MS Word text files on my Mac, PC, and Linux boxes. HOW IS MUSIC ANY DIFFERENT? It isn't. It's a digital file on MY COMPUTER on MY IPOD.
Sorry for this tirade, but all of these so called "excuses" are simply that: Apologizing for Apple. Doesn't play with me, and it never will.
Do I love Apple? Yes I do, and still do. Do I think their draconian closed policy of DRM is good? Heck no, and never will.
w00master