- Oops, you just spilled Quechup on your pants
- Geek Week: XP's not sacked, iPhone dev kit hacked
- A Fool's Paradise
- So long and thanks for all the dish
- Geek Week: E-voting experts and nymphomaniacs wanted, inquire within
- Smoking guns and broken voting machines
- Sequoia and e-voting: The best government money can buy
- Geek Week: Google Wireless, Vista SP1, and other thought crimes
- Scientology, The China Syndrome, and my wiki ways
- Diamonds are a CEO's best friend
April 04, 2007 | Comments: (0)
DRM a little DRM of me
Free at last, free at last ...
Finally, four years after Apple iTunes opened for business, one of the four major record companies has agreed to drop digital rights management and allow unfettered MP3s to be sold online. Good golly Miss Molly.
Everybody gets something out of the Apple EMI deal. The record company gets relief from the 99 pennies per ditty pricing Apple has imposed on singles, something the industry has been whining about for years. Non-FairPlay files will cost 30 cents more than their locked-down cousins. (Thus revealing the true cost of P2P file swapping -- just a smidge less than the $750 per song the RIAA has been claiming in its lawsuits.)
Consumers get to play tunes on something other than an iPod, as well as higher quality sound for their home stereos. Apple gets to play the knight in shining white satin, but more important, it gets a wedge against European Commission complaints about its monopolistic tendencies (though the EC's still all shook up about iTunes' arcane country-by-country pricing schemes).
But don't be fooled. This isn't about freeing up iPod owners. It's about smoothing the waters for the iPhone, especially overseas, where the cell phone market is bigger and more sophisticated than Back in the USA. No DRM means fewer EU objections and, possibly, more consumer enthusiasm for dropping $600 on a phone instead of $300 on a pod.
Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. I think I heard that somewhere.
Got heavy metal tips or grungy gossip? Talk to me, baby. The top tipsters will receive a free "I Spy 4 Cringe" bag.
Posted by Robert X. Cringely on April 4, 2007 09:30 AM
RATE THIS ARTICLE:
-
- COMMENTS
Apple finally evolves past the IPOD and so now we get to join in the fun too. The IPHONE would never had happed if it wasn't for all these nice open source web innovations the last years. We surely kicked ass. We should pat ourselves on the back for promoting open standards to pave the way for this.
Mark Madsen
Posted by: Mark at April 5, 2007 05:33 AMGood point. We want to think that the big companies like Apple are looking out for us (consumers). But we must continually look for the profit motive. Increasingly, the profit motive comes from markets outside of the USA. I am sure many consumers will say, "Big deal, we are now free." It takes a shift in thinking toward globalism in order to see how these small changes over time will affect us.
Posted by: O at April 5, 2007 12:50 PMKris Kristofferson, right? Janis made the song immortal, but many think she wrote it.
Posted by: Doug Gustafson at April 7, 2007 02:40 PMMe and Bobbie McGee, as originally sung by Kristofferson. When Joplin did it, the title became Me and Bobby McGee.
Posted by: Silverlokk at April 8, 2007 11:45 PM
