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European Countries Up Pressure On iTunes, FairPlay
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LOOK. At the end of the day when you buy from iTMS you know the score on the media and its limitations. Those limitations are set like that as that is the result of apples negotiations with the record labels. If you don't like it, don't buy from iTMS. SIMPLE.
Buy from elsewhere where you can do what you want with your media, don't moan here. Apple makes little to no money on its music sales, iTMS is only there for iPOD sales....without the iPOD there is no iTMS and with no iTMS there is no iPOD (well that is an exaggeration now given its market share...but thats the way it was).
Buy from elsewhere where you can do what you want with your media, don't moan here. Apple makes little to no money on its music sales, iTMS is only there for iPOD sales....without the iPOD there is no iTMS and with no iTMS there is no iPOD (well that is an exaggeration now given its market share...but thats the way it was).
Hardly going to happen now is it. Europe runs the risk of ruining that one for us by kicking off about the music!
2 years ago i used to be an ardent Apple fan, now i still admire the company but am not blinded by Steve reality force field.
More power to the people, yes people should be able to play there music on any player, and yes the iPod is streets ahead of the competition.
More power to the people, yes people should be able to play there music on any player, and yes the iPod is streets ahead of the competition.
I do agree with you.
However, there is also this scenario:
1. Apple is forced to open Fairplay up to other device manufacturers
2. Creative (or Sandisk, whoever) makes a player that works with Fairplay, but it is buggy. Their WMA code is fine.
3. People buy a bunch of songs from iTMS and generic WMA store to play on their generic MP3 player. But, the WMA songs play fine, and the iTMS songs don't.
4. They then conclude that the iTMS store is broken, sucks, whatever. Apple gets a bad reputation because of a poorly developed generic MP3 player.
That is the entire reason that Apple wants to keep tight control on who gets to use FairPlay.
Or perhaps someone should put pressure on the copyright owners of those things in those countries to make them available on iTunes in Europe. Remember it takes more than just Apple alone to make this happen.
That is just hypothetical - it may not actually happen.
There is nothing to stop Apple from having a certification - kind of like what microsoft do with its hardware 'Certified for use with Vista' for example.
"Works with Fairplay" on the box.
There is nothing to stop Apple from having a certification - kind of like what microsoft do with its hardware 'Certified for use with Vista' for example.
"Works with Fairplay" on the box.
Apple provides you with the way to break the DRM. Burn to CD and rip as MP3.
Still, that's not the choice I was talking about. I was referring to the choice of whether to but from iTMS or not. You could choose to stop buying from the iTMS today. No penalty, you'd still get to use your iPod, you could still buy music and play it on your iPod. There's not restriction of your choice here. But the music that you did buy from the iTMS is still subject to the restrictions that it was when you bought it. I don't see that there's anything wrong with that.
Let's say I've purchased $2,000 of games for my Playstation. I cannot use them on my Xbox. Is that also "unfairly restricting consumer choice"? I don't think so.
swingerofbirch
macrumors 68040
I think the difference is that Apple is pumping previously player-independent content into a closed ecosystem. I think it is their right to do so, and even as a liberal who believes in economic fairness, I think this is an instance where the market can sort itself out. iTunes definitely has limitations that CDs do not and that PlaysForSure systems do not. So, if it is such a terrible thing to be locked into iTunes, people presumably have the free will not to buy from iTunes, not to buy iPods, and create their own ecosystems and markets as they please. Apple is essentially selling cassette tapes that can only be played on Apple cassette tape players (an oversimplification I know, since you can burn CDs). But don't people know this? The only reasonable action I could see a government taking would be to require this to be stated in more simple language than is usually present in a contract.
In that case it's not unfair because there are legitimate technical reasons that make it impracticle. It's not up to the companies to make sure their product works with everything.
But in the case of music it WOULD have worked except for the barriers these companies put up. It's the opposite, in other words.
Similar to music...have you bought any DVDs in your life? Want to watch them on your iPod? Well, get ready to buy them all again from the iTunes store. It's illegal to rip your DVDs for use on your iPod, you know.
You're really ok with that? It kind of bugs me.
YES YOU CAN! He bought the playstation games knowing they wouldn't play on his Xbox as i bought my iTMS content knowing it wouldn't play on anything but my ipod.
If anything the music industry is better as there are LOADS of sources that i can get my stuff from that i can use on any platform.....can't do that on a games console!
Fine, but that should go to Microsoft's DRMd files as well. I like iPods, I should be able to buy music from the Zune store or a "PlaysForSure" compatible store and play it on my iPod. Why is it ONLY Apple being pressured to open its DRM?
What the consumer thinks doesn't matter. From an engineering perspective music DRM and video games are the exact OPPOSITE when talking about them in this way.
It's silly to say opposite things are the same.
Basically illegal file sharing/stealing of copyrighted material is the reason why we have DRM. We need to protect the holders of the copyrights.
I'm on the fence about better quality (greater than 128Kbps). Originally people wanted as many songs as they could get on a 5GB generation iPod (would you rather have CD quality and get only 10 CDS on an iPod). Apple had to decided between music quality vs quantity of songs. Now that Apple has higher capacity iPods (the 80GB iPod can hold 100 CD quality albums) and only getting larger people will have a choice.
Now why am I on the fence, well. I have bought some "re-mastered" CDs that sound like crap and I actually have some AAC content from the iTunes Music store that sounds superior to the same music on CD (my favorite example of this is The Who's It's Hard album (the content from iTunes sounds vastly superior to the CD and that's just one example).
I listen to a lot of music and I have a good sense of what sounds good and what sounds like crap and I know that CDs should sound better, but....
What I would really love is that Apple offered higher quality music and if iTunes would store and play the higher quality music and that it when it synced to my iPod it would automatically sync up lower quality (AAC 128) on the fly.
That would be really cool!
PS - I want to apologize again for my Protected AAC to MP3 statement I made earlier. Is there a way I can delete the post?
NO!
Ever since god created computers, there have been different systems - most of each, incompatible with each other.
Music, on the other hand, has always been compatible with the media type and player type.
i.e., Tapes -> works with any tape player
Records - works with record players
CDs - ..
There is nothing different about digital music. The format is different, but thats the only difference. Consumers should not be locked in.
Let me refer you back to a previous post:
"
A. I wonder how many people whined about those DRM protected CDs that had the side effect of not being able to play on certain CD Players, i.e., car CD players, portal cd players were often affected
B. I wonder how many people in (A) think that Apple are in their rights to keep iTMS music tied to Apple devices only?!
( kind of two faced , if you ask me!)
In scenario (A) - the media player came first ( i.e., cd players, iPod )- and then the affected media ( i.e., crippled ( drm ) CDs and fairplay music ) came second..."
What do you think of scenario (A)?
Do you think its right that one of those drm'ed CDs wouldn't play on your cd player ( even though the package said - this is protected )?
OK with the result (no DRRM), dislike the legal reasoning reported--it seems the basis is by size or by success alone, and not anything like abuse of monopoly power.
On the other hand, Apple is probably not the only impetus behind the DRM of Fairplay---the RIAA is quite a prime mover and shaker there. If there is governmental pressure to remove FairPlay, and quite a few record labels start to give it up, I suspect Apple won't be too unhappy.
On the other hand, Apple is probably not the only impetus behind the DRM of Fairplay---the RIAA is quite a prime mover and shaker there. If there is governmental pressure to remove FairPlay, and quite a few record labels start to give it up, I suspect Apple won't be too unhappy.
Thats crap and you know it. There is nothing to stop a game being multi platform (WOW is an example). It comes down to economics and making money and at the end of the day you buy iTMS content knowing your limitations same as when you buy a certain type of console and the games for it.
They're not.
It's not convenient to move it from one player to another, but it's quite possible.
Ease and convenience changes the legal argument, and I suspect the rhetoric.
Becuase, like any court case, it's easier to go down than up.
IF they have their way with Apple then how long do you think it will take them to apply the same rules to every other company? About a week.
On the other hand, if they start with the smallest music company over there and win...well that does nothing for them when fighting Apple. You always go for the biggest guy when it comes to court.
You just don't grasp it do you? No one forces you to buy from iTMS!
Buy from somewhere else, you can get non DRM music from loads of sources on the net that will work on any player.....no one is holding a knife to your throat. People have made the decision to buy from iTMS knowing the restrictions. Get over it.
Erm, I DO grasp it, actually!
I believe in consumer rights / freedom, not consumer lock in.
I believe in consumer rights / freedom, not consumer lock in.
I never said it was impossible. My only point was that it took time and money to convert software and games. You dissagree with that?
So WOW just magically recompiled itself for different platforms without any extra work from its creators?
I was under the impression that doing that kind of stuff took time and money, but you're saying it's free?