“Speaking to an exclusive gathering of press in London on a number of issues, such as security, Steve Ballmer didn’t pass up the opportunity to take several digs at his company’s arch rival Apple,” Andy McCue reports for Silicon.com. “At the heart of the debate is Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology which will let content providers such as record labels and movie studios keep control of their intellectual property (IP) – or at least ensure all royalties are paid and copyright observed.”
Andy McCue reports for Silicon.com., “Billing Microsoft as the good guys and Apple the villains of the piece – at least as far as corporate America, rather than users, is concerned, Ballmer said: ‘We’ve had DRM in Windows for years. The most common format of music on an iPod is ‘stolen.’ However, Ballmer conceded it isn’t going to be an easy battle to win. ‘Most people still steal music,’ he said. ‘We can build the technology, but there are still ways for people to steal music.'”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If Ballmer’s correct about “stealing,” then any player capable of playing unprotected music would be the tools of thieves the world over. Interesting, Ballmer focuses only on Apple’s iPod and leaves the Dell DJ’s of the world out of his critique. And, unfortunately for Ballmer, Apple’s so far ahead, he needs a high powered telescope just to be able to see the iPod maker’s cloud of dust.
Oh no! The all great Steve Balmer knows I use a Mac and steal music! I must repent!
The power of Balmer compels me!
Aww, Balmer is just miffed because people don’t break the law and steal music for his music player. Poor guy, he scares small animals and children and noone like his products. See, stealing is the best way to show you love someone…or your iPod. ^_^
jk!
I thought we mac heads were only 2% of the population. I’ll bet the majority of ipods are owned by windows users. This gut will cut his own throat if he’s not careful.
Besides, let the RIA worry about the music. What about all the pirated software thats out there. On both platforms.
I meant ‘this guy’ will cut his own throat…
As these remarks were made in London, I suggest a (very, very large) group of iPod users sue Ballmer for libel under British law. That should just about wipe out Micro$oft’s cash reserves.
Buried Caesar-
I disagree that saying the following two quotes are equivalent:
“The most common format of music on an iPod is ‘stolen.'”
“iPod users are music thieves.”
Ballmer said the first, not the second. Silicon.com can be blamed for putting words into Ballmer’s mouth (second quote above).
Silicon.com has paraphrased or rather jumped to a logical conclusion without letting its readers know that explicitly. But why are the two statements different in my opinion? In the first, Ballmer can be inferred to be saying that if you add up all of the tracks on all of the iPods in the world and break them into different categories, the ‘stolen’ category would come out on top in percentage. True? Maybe, but it would be impossible to prove or disprove. But even if it is true, that doesn’t mean that iPod users are all music thieves. And that is exactly what is inferred by the second quote, the one silicon.com made up. Ballmer could be correct in his actual statement if it just so happens that 40% of the iPod users have huge amounts of pirated music from Napster on their iPods. The other 60% of people are perfectly honest, but their music is comprised of mp3’s, aac’s, wav’s, and aif’s. But my problem is that Silicon.com unfairly villified him by paraphrasing the way they did. They should have stuck with straight quotes which makes Ballmer look pretty bad anyway. His DRM comments are unsubstantiated. It’s a shameless and idiotic attempt to plug their piece of junk media center.
How are tablet PCs doing, by the way? And the X-Box compared to the PlayStation2?
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I dislike Ballmer as much as anyone else here, but I don’t think stooping to slurs and misquotes is particularly beneficial.
Mike
Totally irresponsible. Shame.
microsoft likes anal
Does that mean that PC users are all virus scripters?
That would make a little more sense.