“The market dominance of Apple’s iPod music player is causing ever more restrictive digital rights management (DRM) technologies, argued Cory Doctorow, a fellow with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.,” Tom Sanders reports for vnunet.com. “He pointed out that Apple is looking to prevent users switching from iPods to competing devices by making sure that music from the iTunes music store plays only on the iPod. ‘Apple [turns] every iTune you buy into a 99 cent price tag on switching from Apple to a competitor’s product,’ Doctorow told delegates. ‘If you start with an iPod and you want to move to a Creative product and you have spent $50 on music, that’s a $50 investment that you abandon.'”
“Apple’s competitors meanwhile are pushing for even more restrictive DRM in an effort to entice content owners such as movie studios and record labels to sign exclusive content licensing deals. By offering to further tighten DRM restrictions, such companies are playing to the content industry’s fears of new technologies and piracy. They also bank on the content owners’ troublesome relationship with Apple which has shown little willingness to raise download prices,” Sanders reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Personally, we blame Apple for the high price of pancakes at IHOP while patiently explaining that you should just BURN A DRM-FREE AUDIO CD of your Apple iTunes Music Store songs if you unfortunately suffer brain damage and find that you want dump your iPod for a “Creative” device. Whoops, there goes the whole “lock-in” argument. Sorry, Cory. FairPlay lets you to play your music on up to five computers (and enjoy unlimited synching with iPods), allows unlimited CD burning for individual songs and lets you burn CDs of specific playlists up to 7 times each. Change the order of the songs in that playlist and you get 7 more CD burns. Again, the audio CDs your burn with iTunes are DRM-free. And only iTunes supports both Mac and Windows PC users. The online outfits that sell songs for the also-ran devices like those from “Creative,” are Windows-only. Mac users need not apply. That seems just a bit more restrictive than Apple’s solution to us.
Now, get a load of this:
“Doctorow’s keynote presentation focused on how iPod users lose any investment they have made in MP3 content if they ditch the iPod and move over to another provider such as Creative,” Mark Chillingworth writes for IWRBlog (Information World Review, part of vnu.net europe) in an article that’s inexplicably headlined “Apple actions damage Podcasts.”
“Apple is potentially damaging the growth of MP3 as a content medium. It may have made digital audio content fashionable with its iPod device, but if it divides the market into segments the medium will fail to flourish. If any company should know this, its Apple,” Chillingworth writes. “Apple made personal computers a reality, only to lock out software developers and hand a massive advantage to Bill Gates and Microsoft. Apple is now a minority computer for social outcasts instead of the de facto standard it could have been.”
Chillingworth writes, “Apple’s behaviour is a concern to content producers, owners and information professionals looking to increase access to their information using MP3. Although, if history follows its previous path, Apple will slip into oblivion again for acting this way.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Mr. Chillingworth seems not to know what a podcast is or what Apple has done to foster the medium. It has nothing whatsoever to do with what Doctorow is whining about above. Mr. Chillingworth also seems to have no idea about the difference between MP3 and the FairPlay-protected AAC files that Apple sells via iTunes Music Store. And how the heck did Apple “lock out software developers?” Sheesh.
The Macintosh platform required and still requires huge investments by developers to create compatible software. So, when faced with budgetary contraints, they chose and still sometimes choose to go with the most popular platforms. The iPod simply plays music that can be encoded, for very little cost, in any format the “developers” (musicians and labels) desire: AAC, MP3, WMA, etc. The music doesn’t need to be rewritten, recorded, and remastered. It’s like writing Photoshop once and then pressing a button to translate it for use on Mac, Windows, Linux, etc. To draw an analogy between what happened with the Mac platform and the iPod/iTunes symbiotic relationship simply highlights the writer’s ignorance of the vast differences between the two business situations.
One last question, is being called “social outcasts” better or worse than “fanatical cultists?” Let’s ask Mr. Chillingworth: mark_chillingworth@vnu.co.uk
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Related articles:
Apple’s vs. Microsoft’s music DRM: whose solution supports more users? – August 17, 2005
The iPod is not the Mac, so stop trying to compare them – August 13, 2004
Is the landscape bare of worthy rebuttalists to this sort of nonsense? Can’t we just lock these jackanapes into a room with an iRiver and a PC and an iPod and an iMac and let them see how compatible this list of hardware is with each other? We know who will win, but, as we can well see, it appears these bozos have not even taken up arms, but just repeat in slobber what they’ve been told.
Even after an avalanche of misinformation and corrections people still don’t get the DRM setup on the iPod.
Whats worse is that writers like this do NO RESEARCH on what they write before blabbing their opnions to the world.
furthermore, I missed his damnation of the Mac community as a bunch of “social outcasts” for not blindly following the rest of the “normal” people off the cliff known as Windows.
I say spam the hell out of this guy, he’s just a jerk.
Even the so called competition who use a Microsoft solution don’t use MP3. There is an argument to be made about Apple “restricting” you to the iPod, however when such simple things as stating the correct formats are so very wrong it makes the whole thing a mess.
Well I don’t care what this guys says. I hate DRM.
If I close my Apple account. I lose access to all the music I’ve purchased. How is that different from a subscription plan?
How did he know I was a social outcast?
“If I close my Apple account. I lose access to all the music I’ve purchased. How is that different from a subscription plan?”
Obviously even the people using iTunes don’t know how to use it, it’s not just the writers who don’t get it.
What a bunch of FUD!!! Let’s see now how much more money you lose when you rent your music and decide to stop with those other guy’s services. With iTunes I have a copy on CD that I can put back. With those other guys YOU WOULD HAVE NOTHING!!!
iTunes has the least restrictive DRM of all the music services so far unless of course your a pirate doing P2P copying. This story is so full of crap and lies that it almost sounds like Creative’s donut boy talking.
Why no uproar that Mirosoft quit support for the Mac media player? Why no pat on the back to Apple for holding prices, allowing multiple burns, creating an easy to use cross-platform system that just works!
trolling–nothing to see here–move along…
Actually, that is ghetto-ist looking tech website I have ever seen. Pity hits would probably be ok.
Doctorow runs a great website, boingboing.net (frequently referenced in John Gruber’s daringfireball.net). In almost everything else, I tend to agree with him, and I’m pretty sure he’s a Mac user. But for some reason, the idea of DRM does seem to turn him into a raving socialist about Apple crushing the proletariat. I don’t believe it has ever occurred to this learned man that, like, the major music labels asked Apple to implement it. (And by ask, I mean insist.)
(And by saying “proletariat,” I’ve just made myself think of Sputnik. Where have you gone, comrade…? They don’t make trolls like that anymore.)
This guy Doctorow is a Fellow with E.F.F.? Somebody better change his diaper because he’s full of it. How can anybody sound so stupid. On the first page he bitches about Apple’s DRM being soooo restrictive and bad for business. On page two he says most DRM’s can be easily stripped. I know Americans have a short attention span, but from one page to the next?
The other guy, Chillingworhtless, is even worse. Somebody actually pays him to show how much he doesn’t know? And to call all Mac users “social outcast,” because we don’t toady-up to an operating system that is the biggest sham going, he should be castrated.
i enjoy being a social outkast; at least, that’s better than being a mainstream lemming…
OK now all the people who make this argument actually have one thing in mind, even though they don’t say it very well. They want to be able to take any music, purchased anywhere and play it on any device made by anyone. This is actually like what music used to be. Any album could be purchased at any store and played on any phonograph (except maybe Edisons original). They mistakenly blame Apple for this no longer being possible. However, I believe that now is the time for Apple to make the boldest move ever. License Fairplay. First to Sony, then to Panasonic then to Samsung. Slowly add new vendors. Do this slowly enough so that the die hard WMA vendors suffer a slow death as the rest of the world takes up Fairplay/AAC. Apple would get a fee for every song sold even if they did not sell it themselves. The argument about incompatibility would go away. And Microsoft would be left holding the WMA bag. But now is the time.
MDN spreads as much disinformation as they sweep away:
MDN: “just BURN A DRM-FREE AUDIO CD of your Apple iTunes Music Store songs if you … dump your iPod for a “Creative” device.”
With the associated sound quality loss. Good option.
MDN: “And how the heck did Apple “lock out software developers?”
By refusing to permit them to develop applications that leverage FairPlay, regardless of how much they are willing to invest. Don’t pretend the retailers are *CHOOSING* not to support the iPod. Apple has repeatedly refused to allow them to support it.
MDN: “The iPod simply plays music that can be encoded, for very little cost, in any format the “developers” (musicians and labels) desire: AAC, MP3, WMA, etc.”
It does NOT play files encoded in WMA, and the developers are NOT permitted to use any format they desire. FairPlay AAC is prohibited by Apple.
If you’re going to send an email to this bozo, cc his associates in advertising and the one who runs the place, letting them know that with this poor level of research and reporting you’ll not advertise or subscribe to their site.
Hit them where it hurts — let them know that spreading this type of misinformation only damages their bottom line.
bobby_pickering@vnu.co.uk, mark_chillingworth@vnu.co.uk, stuart_munro@vnu.co.uk, fiona_ashton@vnu.co.uk, nigel_clear@vnuexhibitions.co.uk
BTW: they say in their advertising section that “it is the monthly no professional can afford to be without.”
MW: “couple” as in it only tales a couple of minutes to drop off an email.
You guys are such fanboys. Cory Doctorow is very well respected and I agree with him that ANY DRM is restrictive, even Apple’s Fairplay. Sure, you can burn CD’s to get the DRM off of your purchased music. So then, what is the point in having DRM to begin with? If I buy music off of iTunes, burn it to a CD as an MP3 and then share it on some P2P site, isn’t that basically showing that DRM is pointless?
And don’t give me that bull about Apple only using it because the RIAA wants it. If thats the case, why can’t independent artists sell their music on iTMS without DRM? Because Apple made sure that the DRM gets added when you download it. Its not on their servers. It IS all about vendor lock-in. They know damn well that if you buy 500 songs from iTMS, there is very little chance that you will burn CD’s of all those songs in MP3 format.
And has anyone purchased videos from iTMS? Guess what, the DRM gets you big time here. No burning to DVD. You can only watch from your Mac or PC.
The simple fact is that DRM is stupid. The RIAA and the MPAA are more concerned about stopping the 1% who get their music and movies illegally than the 99% who are interested in legally downloading their content.
If the RIAA had any brains, they would drop the idea of DRM on purchased music. It would immediately ruin Apple’s bargaining power for pricing. Why? Because then any music store could open up and sell their music to iPod users.
Sell the music in MP3 or lossless format. Wow, what a concept. DRM-free music. Competition in the online music stores. But the RIAA are idiots. It will never happen.
What really gets me is those of you who argue in favor of Apple’s DRM over no DRM at all.
PC apologist, your criticism of MDN’s question about locking out software developers has no validity because the argument the author makes is about Apple in the 80’s and MDN is merely arguing that they did not lock out developers in the 80’s. Their criticism has nothing to do with Fairplay
Jeff, no one is saying that DRM-free isn’t better than having DRM, but the TRUTH is, if you don’t illegally share your music, the DRM in iTunes will hardly ever, if ever, be a hinderance. Fact of the matter is, the people who complain about DRM are usually the ones who steal music, thus they are the ones who are responsible for DRM even being an issue in the first place.
On another note, there are online stores that sell DRM free music and yes some poeple use those and iTunes.
@ PC Apologist
MDN spreads as much disinformation as they sweep away:
MDN: “just BURN A DRM-FREE AUDIO CD of your Apple iTunes Music Store songs if you … dump your iPod for a “Creative” device.”
With the associated sound quality loss. Good option.
You are wrong on this point, IMO. Transcoding an audio track from AAC/128 (from iTunes) to AIFF on an “Audio CD” is not going to cause any loss of sound quality. Whatever the sound quality of the AAC track was –a subjective opinion of the listener–, it is preserved in the AIFF.
I have bought perhaps $5000 worth of music since iTMS opened. I am well aware that Apple may not live forever, and that iPods will one day be as ubiquitous as the dodo, but I am not afraid for my music. When that day comes, there will undoubtedly be software with which I can batch transcode my digital files to the next format.
Think of JPEGs: they’ll be gone one day too. So are you crying about your digital camera taking pix which will have “associated image quality loss” when you have to move them to the next format?
Or are you going to stick with film and stay in the past?
MDN: indeed
Those Brits aren’t too bright.
Kaliko Trapp,
“Think of JPEGs: they’ll be gone one day too. So are you crying about your digital camera taking pix which will have “associated image quality loss” when you have to move them to the next format?”
– I like this analogy. Music should indeed be more like JPEG files. Unfortunately they are not. Imagine if JPEGs had DRM restrictions limiting the ways you can use your pictures, or imagine if each camera manufacturer had their own proprietary format that only worked with their special software, or imagine having to convert thousands of pictures to a different format by having to endure some unreasonable, quality degrading process at the rate of 20 pictures every 15 minutes just to view them on a computer made by a competitor.
Of course, music is very different than pictures, so the analogy is not a valid one.
This article is absolutely correct about the problem of DRM. Because Apple has been so successful with DRM, DRM is not going away. Instead, it’s only going to become more and more common. Companies are going to try to use DRM-like solutions every chance they can get with every product they can. So yes, in a sense Apple’s iPod dominance is making our lives more restrictive. It may not affect a lot of people right now, but it’s the future that people should be more worried about.
Hey Kaliko Trapp,
You claim that burning a CD of your iTunes music won’t cause any loss of sound quality. You are right except that you will really need to make it an MP3 to play on another portable device. And if you don’t think Apple is all about locking you in, they would have made it easier to convert from AAC to another format. You say you’ve bought $5000 worth of music. I can pretty much guarantee that you won’t switch to another player anytime soon. Even if another player comes out that blows an iPod away. Why? Can you imagine trying to convert 5000 songs? Wouldn’t be that much of a pain if you can do it on your hard drive. But no, Apple makes it a pain in the ass by forcing you to burn to CD. Now if thats not vendor lock-in I don’t know what is.
Just because the DRM doesn’t bother you doesn’t mean its not a problem for others. And just because someone complains about DRM doesn’t mean they want to steal their music. I don’t steal music. And I don’t buy online. I buy CD’s because I don’t want the trouble of DRM.
My respect for the EFF and their weaselly stance on piracy (“Stealing is wrong, but don’t you dare try to protect what you own!”) has always been weak, but now it’s gone almost completely.
There is no way Doctorow is that stupid. He knows damn well that iTunes songs can be trivially converted for use on other players. His statement is slimy and disingenuous, designed to further his own agenda at the expense of the truth.
I don’t know why this guy decided to pick on Apple. His gripes seem to be more with DRM in general. DRM is a restriction on music that you own, it’s that simple. Buy CDs. . .it’s better quality and no restrictions for just a little bit more money (unless they’re Sony CDs 😀 )
Thanks to you both, realist and Jeff, for your responses. I agree, Jeff, that I won’t be switching off the iPod anytime soon! As you say, I’ve got too much invested in it.
Also, I like iPod very much at the moment, so I’m still not worried for the time being.
I do agree that DRM gets in the way at the worst possible moments, like when a student of mine was trying to play an iTMS song used in her Keynote presentation, on a G5 which was connected to the projector. It was not her computer, therefore not authorized, ergo a pain in the ass..et.
(Of course, the record industry wouldn’t want her sharing that song in public performance and possibly influencing others to buy it later on. But that’s for another forum posting.)
I just sent the guy an email
It said:
I’m a Mac user. How does that make me a social outcast?
That’s comparable to the scenario below:
Do you own a Maytag refrigerator? Then you are a racist.