Ipod News: 24-03-06 file sharing

Ipod News


p2p news / p2pnet: Adam Livingstone, producer of the BBC's Newsnight program, has an interesting perspective on why Apple (and, therefore, Steve Jobs) might, "hate the French parliament so much this week".
By now, everyone with access to on- or offline news media knows the new French law would stop Apple from stopping people doing what they want with music they've paid good money for.
"Welcome to the hardware/software war," says Livingstone.
In a small controllable market , "you can sit down with your opposite number and work out a system that lets both of you make a profit," he states. "That might be illegal sometimes, but I'm sorry to say it has been known to happen anyway. Or you can let capitalism, red in tooth and claw, find a winner out in the jungle."
Enter iTunes and, "The chaps from Silicon Valley have been making a pile of cash selling their iPods off the back of this while the poor music execs have had to cut down on the white powder deliveries by some margin. And for that they have the Internet and themselves to blame."
Napster had millions of people downloading music even before the arrival of broadband, "and because in those days it relied on piracy, the music was free and easy to download in the universally available format we now know as MP3," states Livingstone. "This was great news for Apple. They made a portable MP3 player, and the queues of customers in Apple stores with peg legs, parrots on their shoulders and who said 'auuurgh Jim lad' rather a lot soon stretched around the block.
"But if sales were built on the back of their customers' piracy, that was hardly Apple's fault. The fact that there were few strictly legal ways of filling an iPod with MP3 music was embarrassing but ultimately beside the point. The record companies were bleeding money to the pirates and Apple was cashing in.
"Yet the music industry was painfully slow to introduce legal music downloading, allowing the pirates and the techies a free hand to shape the assumptions that would govern the new digital landscape. Apple had already won the hardware/software war while the music men were still sunning themselves like crocodiles by their Beverley Hills swimming pools."
Thus, he continues, "when Apple finally offered to sell music online themselves, the befuddled record companies had no option but to try and claw back a few millions into the bank instead of the nothing they were currently making online."
Apple's propblem now is, "there are lots of clever people in eastern lands churning out those 20 pound DVD players who have realised they can do the same trick with MP3 players that work just like iPods, only theirs would be a lot cheaper than 219 pounds plus VAT. Worse still, mobile phones are now packing more processing power than the US space programme and their manufacturers want a piece of the MP3 action too."
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Enter DRM.
iPods, "don't play the digitally protected formats used by other legal download services, so if you have an iPod and you're law abiding then you're locked into iTunes," says the story. "It's a virtuous circle for them, but a vicious one for their competitors."
Hollywood can charge what it likes for videos, Microsoft might rule the computing roost, "But in music, those chaps with the screwdrivers literally call the tune, and the software makers can go whistle," Livingstone says, adding:
"Which was all very nice for them until this week when the French Parliament went and passed a law banning all such proprietary formats. If the legislation passes the French upper house in May then Apple will have to share its DRM secrets with everyone else so that their rivals can use the iTunes formats themselves.
"But once they do, will anyone ever again pay 200 pounds for an iPod?
"Which is why Apple might hate the French Parliament this week and why they could very well boycott the entire country before they ever comply with this law. And, stay or leave, if you listen carefully, can you hear the sound of French record company executives rubbing their hands in glee?"
Also See:stopping people - US backs Jobs in France, March 24, 2006BBC - Apple's core problem with France, March 23, 2006