“The European Union’s consumer chief soft-pedalled her views on Apple Inc. on Tuesday, backing off the line that its iTunes online music store must become more compatible with other formats,” Reuters reports.
Reuters reports, “Meglena Kuneva told a news conference there was no reason to talk about legal action against the U.S. computer and technology company and that she merely wanted to raise questions. ‘I would like, really, to start this debate. What is best to develop this market and to have more consumers enjoying this really very important, very modern way of downloading and enjoying the music?’ she said of Apple’s iTunes.”
Reuters reports, “In this week’s edition of the German magazine Focus, Kuneva had been quoted as saying: ‘Do you think it’s fine that a CD plays in all CD players but that an iTunes song only plays in an iPod? I don’t. Something has to change.'”
“Kuneva said she worked closely with Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes, whose department has found no reason to pursue Apple. Kroes’ department has said there were no problems with Apple’s use of digital rights technology,” Reuters reports.
Full article here.
Well now, it looks like something changed alright. Kuneva seems to have quickly learned the valuable lesson to think before you crack your yap lest the U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce for Technology and others excoriate you for your ignorant ramblings.
Related articles:
U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce for Technology says EU ‘rhetoric’ against Apple is confusing – March 13, 2007
EU Commish on Apple’s iTunes + FairPlay DRM: ‘Something has to change’ – March 12, 2007
Anti-DRM activists rap Steve Jobs; Group petitions Apple CEO to remove FairPlay DRM software – March 10, 2007
Is DRM doomed? – March 09, 2007
How Apple’s FairPlay DRM works – February 26, 2007
Windows Vista’s DRM is bad news – February 14, 2007
Monster Cable announces full support of Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ call for DRM-free music – February 13, 2007
Recording Industry Association of America wants their DRM, calls for Apple to license FairPlay – February 08, 2007
Warner’s Middlebronfman: Jobs’ DRM-free music call ‘without logic and merit, we’ll not abandon DRM’ – February 08, 2007
Dvorak: Apple CEO Steve Jobs is dead right about DRM – February 07, 2007
Apple’s Jobs jolts music industry; Zune exec calls Jobs’ call for DRM-free music ‘irresponsible’ – February 07, 2007
Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ posts rare open letter: ‘Thoughts on Music’ – calls for DRM-free music – February 06, 2007
Norwegian Ombudsman: Apple’s FairPlay DRM is illegal in Norway – January 24, 2007
Major music labels ponder DRM-free future – January 23, 2007
Barista— I will try to keep this civil. Your logic and conclusions are idiotic; I mean really pathetically elementary. How old are you? There is not a single person on the board (regardless of their own tastless remarks) that enjoy DRM and wouldn’t like to see it disappear immediately. That said, most of us recognize the reality that the legal digital distribution of songs came about only because the major record companies were provided the percieved security of DRM. I am not here to argue whether that perception is a mistake on their part or not, but the fact is that there would be no iTS store to be debating if not for DRM. Billions of songs have been sold from iTS not because of its Fairplay DRM, but because Apple went to great lengths to assure the best possible fair use of the songs under the circumstances that it was presented with. More than half of those songs have been sold to NON-Mac owners, so this idea that defenders of iTunes are a bunch rabid Mac fanboys is ridiculous. There are far more people around the world begging Apple to open an iTunes store in their country than those demanding its take down. The question that frustrates iTunes users, and turns them into vocal supporters, is why Apple attacked when, a) it has the most liberal and least offensive expression of DRM in the market, and, b) its CEO has publicly decried DRM and asked the record labels to allow its elimination. If you or others are really interested in protecting consumer fair use, why not go after the most agregious forms of DRM first. Most of us look at iTunes as leader in a more fair access to music. Before iTunes came on the scene where could you by a single song legally for a buck? Apple broke the record industry’s ability to force you to buy 10 crappy tracks on a CD just to get the one good song you really wanted. Your infantile bitterness and attacks on Apple and iTunes reminds me of the fable of the killing of the golden goose. I, for one, don’t want to go back to the pre-iTunes limitations on music purchasing. iTunes has only given us more options, not fewer. Lastly, your complaints of Apple not licensing Fairplay to others are more easy to understand. I would also like to see this. But Jobs explanation of Fairplay security being harder to maintain when other vendors have the keys is not wrong. Windows DRM has been cracked on multiply occassions and I’ve seen Napster, for one, have to revailidate accounts, send patches and re-authorize downloads because of it. So don’t tell me breakdown of DRM schemes have no effect on the companies using them. Digital media sales and distribution is it’s very early stages, and a very fragile balance is taking shape. At the end of the day Apple needs the cooperation of the major record companies for iTunes to operate. You can’t blame Apple for the requirements that these companies place on Apple. But you should be happier that a company such as Apple, with its liberale Fairplay DRM and corporate stance on its elimination, it the dominant player in the field rather than a Microsoft. MS would be totally in bed with the record labels trying to lock down your use of the media and squeezing every last penny out you that it could. So grow up and accept that in an imperfect world there are gradations of discomfort, and imperfect is better than disasterous. Going back to a world without iTunes would be a disaster in my opinion.
Please forgive the typos. It’s after midnight here and I’m half asleep.
Conservative, I’m-still-scared-of-the-commies-under-my-bed, misogynist, xenophobic morons like Linux Guy & Mac Prodigal Son deserve neither DRM-free nor DRM’d music. In fact Steve himself should go and take away his Mac. Mac users like Linux Guy are an insult to Apple.
How many neanderthals are dwelling here anyway? The response here at MDN is appalling. Say, when did you guys beat your wives and GF’s the last time?
Chuckles
Oh no, the US Underjanitor for Less important things than my breakfast has criticised me! I am feeling so open and exposed!
Seriously MDN, stop taking the attitude that if some irrelevant US Government official says something you agree with it must be authoritative. This woman is far more prominent, powerful and influential than perhaps all but five of your country’s public servants.
What was that? Oh of course, how could I forget – there is no service in America, merely apathetically sanctioned exploitation.
Why do you buffoons all think that you have to burn a CD then rip it to turn an ipod tune into an mp3. The whole ‘burn a CD’ stage can be eliminated. My but aren’t we computer tech savy!
I am sensing a lot of hostility here people. Let us all hold hands, count to ten, and come to a consensus.
Yup…Kunevea does indeed look like she has been smacked by the ugly stick.
ha ha lighten up….especcially the condescending Barista who says we Mac users LOVE DRM. No we do not love it. We just view it as an annoyance but don’t particularly care about it since it is easily bypassed (by people wit more than 1 brain cell at least).
If Apple is ever forced to open it’s DRM to all portable players, then MS and every other online music service should be under the same obligation, simultaneouly from that exact moment forward. iTunes is already THE most universally compatible online storefront in the world, I just don’t get this constant grumbling against Apple on this particular issue.
Hey, “A man more civilized than many of you”
Based on your commments, you have a problem w/ anyone who expresses a different political opinion than you and ought to be punished for it… Then you go on to make prejudicial comments about wife or girlfriend beating….
scary… very, VERY scary…
I always seek out friends w/ many differing political opinions b/c I always enjoy hearing people’s differing points of view.
As opposed to someone who appears to be so tunnel visioned, arrogant and childish as to make baseless insults and to suggest that you are ‘more civilized’ due to your beliefs and your own views…
I guess being more ‘civilized’ means that we are simply to agree w/ any statement you make & bow down to your wishes oh great one….
What an arrogant pinhead!
I never regard my country so lowly that my impression of it is driven by by the behavior of a small number of knaves that live in it.
At least she is intelligent enough to listen and willing to admit her mistakes. Unlike a politician in a democratic contry who runs the country like a dictator he over threw.
did her.
bone-us: i POOP on DRM!
mdn = yeeeeesssssss.
s-
I don’t think that came out like you intended.
Correction:
At least she is intelligent enough to listen and willing to admit her mistakes. Unlike a politician in a democratic contry who runs his country like a dictator of another country he over threw.
Thanks TowerTone.
I can’t believe all the immature sexist mysigionist reactions to this. Pathetic.
@thebarista…
“Still, as you’ve all made clear, DRM is cool – I’ve taken a note of the names and your future contributions will be checked for consistency.”
lol…. now THIS is funny. Don’t get out much?
Finally, someone comes to senses!
Yeah, that was HILARIOUS! Just imagining that dope taking the time to check others’ posts on MDN for consistency…LOL.
Jake
S
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No problem-except it was funnier when it appeared Bush overthrew the previous dictator, Clinton.
TT… He didn’t overthrow Clinton, he overthrew Gore by buying the election and bribing the supreme court. Sheesh man, get your urban myths right!
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Ben Dover: I don’t have problems with political views which differ from mine. I do, however, have a problem with open hostility and immature misogyny like calling someone a ‘bitch’ or ‘slut’ just because she’s a she who has critisized somebody’s beloved company. And calling the same person a ‘communist’ falls under the same category. That isn’t a political opinion or rational argumentation. It’s just foolery. I might not agree with conservative ideology, but I wouldn’t have the gall to call conservatives ‘nazis’.
@Towertone
”overthrew the dictator, Clinton…”
In what sense was Clinton a dictator? What a silly, silly, silly man you are.
@Sydney… you mis-understand TT’s post. He was commenting on the post “S” made that impied that Bush overthrew Clinton, and said that post was funnier than when “S” corrected his post to mean that Bush overthrew Saddam.
Ya gotta keep up man! Read it from the top and you’ll get it. (I know, it ruins a joke when someone explains it.)
@Jim
I didnt read s’s post that way at all. “who runs the country like a dictator he over threw…” I read this as Bush runs the country like Saddam ran his… He didn’t say the dictator was running the US. Re-read the post – it was perfectly clear until Towertone muddied the waters…
Towertone is, in my experience, quick to criticise but finds it most unfunny when his own posts are subjected to scrutiny.
… and knowing that Towertone is a Republican…
Well, lots of shamefull commenting here with the most awful of attitued. So someone makes a statement you disagree with – which is apparently anything as being perceived “anti-Apple” – and all you MDN-ers put on your beloved pointy masks, light your torches and ride out and talk ‘bitchslapping’, “I’d do her”, “electrodes to body parts” and various other shameless comments I’ve read. Disgusting.
You guys make me ashamed of being a longtime Macuser. What pestilent woodwork did you all crawl from? And when did that happen?
The mac world used to be civilised, whith differences of opinion actually encouraged and discussed in good fashion. Until MDN with its white trash following came along and turned anything Mac into fundamentalism and into one big digital Middle-East with all the hatetalk and vile commenting that comes with it.
With its arousing style of commenting, MDN encourages this consiously, and is IMO by far the most disgusting (and actually most Microsoftian in its lack of ethics and use of double standards) “enterprise” in the Mac world.
I miss the old, MDN-less days.
MDN-ers, keep on flaming, hating, bitching, insulting, or whatever it is that makes you feel better about yourself and superior to others. You apparently need it.
MDN-trash….