EU takes aim at Apple’s iTunes – News.Cnet.co.uk: Things are heating up for Apple in Europe. After Norway declared iTunes illegal, now we have the EU consumer chief setting her sights on it.
European Union consumer chief Meglena Kuneva has hit out at Apple’s bundling of its popular iPod music players and its iTunes online music store.
“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.
Pressure on Apple has been building, with consumer rights organisations from Germany, France, Finland and Norway recently agreeing on a joint position in their battles against iTunes.
I wonder if Apple will yield to the pressure. Will its lobbying power be enough to stop this?
If I buy software from Apple, it will only work on a Mac. What’s the difference?
I know they probably won’t, but I’d love to see Apple just say, “Fine!” and close iTunes in those countries.
That will never happen, especially if Germany is involved, since it represents a large part of Apple’s iTunes business in Europe. I wonder if the UK will also get into this bandwagon.
#1, even though Apple doesn’t even hint at the idea that you might be able to play iTS songs on a non-Apple music player, people still don’t like the answer. I’m firmly in the group who doesn’t care. I have known full well what the usage restrictions are on music I have purchased there, and if I ever need to get around the DRM for some reason, Apple provides the means to do so with iMovie.
Can anyone think of a comparison? Xerox sells a solid ink printer where the shape of the ink blocks are patented so other ink manufacturers can’t offer a replacement cartridge (they won’t fit).
#1, #4, #5, you are all right. The analogy presented by the E.U. is so preposterous. Virtually every song on iTunes, you can get on CD, which you can rip to whatever device you want.
I think the EU is opening a can of worms. Will Nokia (from Norway’s neighbor) have to open up their phone platform to all O.S.s and applications?
Just stupid.
This seems entirely consistent with what the EU did to Microsoft in requiring them to relase a version of Windows without the media player.
Just more US hating by the Europe. Nothing more to it. If Steve were to move Apple HQ to France would we really have this issue?
Next on the hit list: Boeing.
The Fake Steve Jobs Blog, summed this up succinctly.
6, 8: iTunes DRM is a non-issue for me. I’ve been populating my iPod with new or used (but not ripped) CDs ever since I bought it. I have one sampler album that iTunes gave away for free three years ago, and it’s the only DRM music on my iPod (and is legally backed up on a CD, though at somewhat lower fidelity).
#11,
I think what the EU is asking is for the iTunes application to work with more than iPods (It seems like they also want more stores working with iTunes, than just the iTunes store). I think they are more concerned with the vertical integration that Apple has with their system, than the DRM.
iTunes (the store & songs from it) works with pretty much every personal computer (mac or PC) in the world. So rather than just iPods, there are hundreds of millions of other devices that play Apple’s DRM songs. And you can legally burn your DRM songs, with virtually no loss in quality, and with no copy protection, to CD’s, which can be played on an additional billion devices out in the world.
So, yes, I agree that with few exceptions (some cell phones, etc) the iPod is the only portable device that plays the iTunes songs, but, give me a break, Apple is definitely not, by any means, locking you into only playing the music on the iPod.
C’mon…there’s two angles here:
What the consumer wants and what Apple wants.
Consumers want to hear music on an iPod, and Apple wants to sell iPods.
Perfect match. If you are stupid enough to buy it from iTunes store, it’s your problem.
If you are going to listen to music on anything but and iPod, it’s better to go for the CD.
I buy all my CD’s pressed on good ol plastic. So for the time being this is a non-issue.
If, in the future we can get our music only online, with DRM, then I’ll back up EUs plight.
*yawn*
All they have to do is repeal their DMCA equivalent. There’s already working iTunes cracks out there. We might even get a commercial service that connects directly to the iTunes store.
the whole issue is with the music sold on iTunes. most likely , if they lose, they close the store in which case the RIAA might sue the EU for TRILLOINS of euros for copyright infringement its citizens do.
if they can sue the dead / oldpeople / and family pets they can sue the EU.
How naive can people be? At least 90 percent of iTunes content is sold in the U.S. Apple can kiss the European complainers goodbye with hardly a hiccough. Frankly, I’m bored with Europeans and Canadians whining about not enough iTunes content being available to them. Not having any will lead to amusing bouts of apoplexy, I suspect.
Yes, when will the brave souls in the EU stand up to that vicious Apple, the company that holds guns to innocent Swedish and French heads and forces them to buy iPods, and music from the iTMS? 🙂
20 – Yup, it is.
I’m not an iPod or Apple user, but I do wonder if they’re not going after the wrong people. Jobs is already on record as saying DRM doesn’t work. Maybe that’s his defense for the iPod DRM – it keeps the RIAA off Apple’s back. The RIAA and MPAA bought a lot of politicians (including both California senators) to be able to sue those 13-year-old “evil pirate, arrr” music lovers and other content traders. Just look at Viacom, working so hard to kill off the free buzz YouTube denizens give their products. I wonder what the legal ramifications might be if Apple killed its iPod DRM or handed out free cracks.
if youtube added linksto the torrent…
#22 And you still believe in Santa…
Jobs is renegotiating with the Labels so he needs some leverage.
The one that benefits the most from DRM is Apple. Remember, Apple doesn’t make money from music sales, Apple sells iPods…
The Apple DRM is just there to keep iPod buyers from switching players every two years. Once they build a sizable collection they’re stuck with Apple’s players.
That’s what’s the EU bitchin’ about.
C’mon, Joao. You know better than that, we’ve been down this road more than once…
Apple – y’know, the company founded by counterculture pirates, purveyors of Blue Boxes, fer gawdsakes? They placated the suits and the lawyers with a DRM scheme that makes the media people happy, but which they deliberately left easily, reliably 100% defeatable. Every iPod user who can follow the steps necessary to d/l music from iTMS can also strip the DRM wrapper, with less skill, knowledge or effort than it took to d/l the music in the first place. It is common knowledge how to do it and you might notice that Apple has never said “Don’t do that!” or made any attempt whatsoever to shut that particular backdoor – and that’s because they put it there!
But they can’t officially acknowledge that! The authorities in the EU making this stink can’t possibly be so clueless, so ill-informed as to not know this – you can’t tell me some of those legislators don’t have computer-savvy kids who have already set ’em straight. It’s a big crock – the “restrictions” on iTMS music purchases are there as a necessary sop to content owners – in the real world, it amounts to nothing more than a piece of thin paper – pre-perforated, no less – wrapped around a CD jewel case that says “You are not permitted to break this seal.” Who actually would take that seriously? “Oh, jeez. If I tear this paper off, I’m breaking the law! Well, I can’t do that, so I’ll sue the manufacturer to make them not put this piece of paper on here!”
I mean, c’mon… This EU shit will benefit exactly no one, but it’ll wind up costing everyone involved a lot of Euros, which ultimately will be recouped from – who else – the consumer. The nanny state strikes again and everyone winds up worse off. Jesus H. X!
I only agree with you in one thing:
This sh*t comes from a bunch of pencil pushers up in Brussels. Overpaid and overzealous.
The rest is just drivel. Apple is not what it’s purported to be. That crap about being some kind of “counterculture” freedom fighter is just a Spin…
It’s their marketing. It’s the target they’re aiming. Just that.
Ask all the independent labels if they have no DRM… No.
And, granted, removing DRM is even easy. So why don’t they just remove it and sell an unprotected MP3 or AAC just like a CD is? At least those labels or indie artists that allow it? That would increase sales… just not guarantee an iPod sale…
Oh, grow up for once… Apple is a company, it has shareholders, and quarterly reports. It trades in the stock exchange. It’s a company. OK, they make great products, arguably, and they put some heart into their business, but they’re not an NGO nor Mother Teresa… They sell boxes and ultimately a Lifestyle. They’re like BMW : great cars, but Toyota makes them cheaper and more reliable. Apple is for the Upper income minority, the rest of us “rednecks” get M$…
My question is: how old are you, Joao? The reason I ask is this – I’m a child of the ’60s, a hippie. (I’m also a nerd, and that creates a lotta confusion in the minds of people who assume that everyone has to fit into one neat little prelabeled box, but that’s not relevant here.)
I’m a contemporary of Steve J., a tie-dyed, incense, bell-bottoms, waterbed, black-light-poster, dope-smoking, long-haired, Birkenstock-wearing hippie. And that is how Steve started out, as opposed to BillG, the true stereotypical button-down, pimply, socially inept straight dweeb with no creativity, no original ideas, but with Daddy’s money and Mommy’s high-powered business connections.
Of course both camps have shifted from their original roots toward the image of the other. M$ paid the sellout multimillionaire Stones to use their tunes to try (with some success) to dupe young people into thinking of the company of cold-blooded suits, stolen ideas, consumer gouging, marketing hype, legal manipulation and militant greed is somehow “hip”. They get Brian Eno to create the (in)famous Win startup chime. All window dressing. There‘s your ‘spin’, Joao…
And Apple has indeed gotten a haircut, hung up the love beads and hash pipe in order to get investors and potential business customers to take them seriously, and by the time of Gil Amelio, it’s counterculture soul was in suspended animation. But the return of the hippie founder turned the company around from the near-death-experience that the suits had caused. And Fortune 500 company or no, who makes the mp3 player everyone’s gotta have, the suits at M$? Is Bono hanging with BillG?
When you claim, with the certainty that only comes with a lack of personal experience, that ” just a(sic) Spin…
It’s their marketing. It’s the target they’re aiming. Just that.” you’re flat-out wrong. I’ve been with Apple from close to the beginning. If anything, they’re trying to appear serious and businesslike, that’s the point of the pretense of “protecting” the content with DRM.
The hippie / nerd dichotomy of Apple & M$ has been highly diluted and muted, but it still exists and if you don’t notice the difference, I put the blame on your youthful ignorance of how deep the differences once were and still are, even though hidden. Steve doesn’t need to sell blue boxes anymore, but he still understands the pirate mentality.
Compare the iPod to the Zune. The Zune is a nerd product trying to be hip, but you can’t ignore the greed factor built into it’s fundamental design, that ‘3 times / 3 days, then it’s gone’ bullshit. Apple has pulled no such shit. iTunes DRM is, as you admit, trivial to defeat. So why is it you don’t grasp that they have to go through that pretense of “protecting” the music, in order to satisfy the content providers? Steve explained it himself, all you had to do was read between the lines; he would drop it all, but to do so would cause his suppliers to come in and remove their product from his shelves.
How can you ask, unless you’ve entirely missed the point, ” So why don’t they just remove it and sell an unprotected MP3 or AAC just like a CD is?” Because if they do, there won’t be anything to sell. If the “DRM” pretense is removed, 90%+ of the product will vanish. The content owners lawyers demand at least the PRETENSE of protection. THAT’S why. So the consumer tradeoff is a tiny bit of effort on the part of the consumer required so that a wide range of product is available. Just how lazy can you get? “It’s too much trouble. I wannit done for me, cuz I might have to squander an erg or two.”
Jeez, what more can the guy do? Like I said, he wraps a wisp of tissue paper around the iTMS, draws a cartoon padlock on it with a felt-tip, adds “(you are absolutely, totally, no-shit forbidden to) Open this package by cutting or tearing the red perforated line here” the last part in red 36-point type, with an arrow indicating where to open with the least effort.
He plays that obviously transparent charade to keep the frigging lawyers happy, and it does. Then comes this bunch of idiots, saying “My god! Look at the size of that lock! How can anyone get past that?? The vicious bastards! We’ll fix those greedy fucks!”
I mean, X on a stick!
Hey man… hope you put this thread on RSS…
I’m working right now… can’t answer your (long winded) post. But I will…
I was born in 65 to answer your first question, but not in the west coast (at least america, since I’m a Portuguese natural…)
A lot of stuff to digest, but one thing stands out: you’re in a roll…It came out of the tips of your hands with such frenzy…
But hey: I don’t blame you. And somewhere in the text you actually flatter me. I’m no youth. In fact mine it’s the voice of someone that was In but now is Out of love with Apple. Just because of that you’ve said. The powers that be and the revolution. There is no revolution. That’s one thing I’ve learned. There’s change and there’s evolution. And there’s excellence. I don’t take excellence away from Apple. They do their stuff and they do it good. And so it seems to everybody. And everybody feels good in Apple’s bosom. There is a feel of cleanliness and righteousness.A minimalist order.
That is not the revolution. That is not the “dope-smoking, long-haired, Birkenstock-wearing hippie” Steve started out to be. Neither is he the nemesis of the “button-down, pimply, socially inept straight dweeb”.
This is not good vs. bad. Not even cool vs, uncool. No Sir.
But I admit that it “looks” that way. And it’s made to look that way.
If you just sit back and enjoy the scene as an impartial bystander, you’ll notice that we’re talking about tools. Computers are tools. And also we’re talking different things. One makes machines and the Other makes the software that rides on them. But if you look closer, the roles are reversed. In fact the one that makes the software is the most influential to determine the shape of the hardware (i.e. PCs are what they are mainly because of Microsoft). And the other, that started out to make the machines, is step by step becoming more and more mainstream and standardized, Focusing more and more the “difference” on the software.
So, … what is it? What sets them apart ?
It’s the promise. And the assurance. And the illusion of empowerment.
Desire is Apple’s hottest selling point. It’s not that their products are good, it’s what they seem. And they seem not to be conformed and straight as an office cubicle. On the other hand M$ sells exactly the opposite. Their products seem so business like and straight.
But that’s the “Spin” I was talking about: Microsoft sells to the large companies. They sell OEM, and bulk licensing. Microsoft sells to the Corporate Suits of the World.
And Apple sells to the Artist, and the Designer , and the Musician.
Apple sells unconformity.
That is so evident, that explains everything:
Why Macs are more expensive than PCs, and why Macs have such a Market penetration compared to PC/M$.
They want the General Public to Identify with that Stereotype.
See the “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” commercials…It’s a reassurance machine, remembering people that they did the right choice buying a Mac and being “hip”. That’s the Spin.
And why is it a Spin?
Well, because they are Companies, with shareholders and Boards of Directors and stuff like that. They are not the “Liberation Army” plotting to bring freedom to the world (like the 1984 commercial), nor the sinister BigBrother enslaving us all into uniform reverence.
They just want to make money! And to do it they play their tune just the way you like it. Simple. It’s just a matter of choosing sides.
And that’s what I’m saying in the first place. We don’t have to!
That’s why I said that Apple’s DRM is in Apple’s best interest. And Jobs coming out in the open saying that he is against it, is just another reinforcement of the image Apple has chosen to portray.
Apple sells iPods. The music in not a money maker. The only reason Apple came out with the iTunes Music Store is because the writing was on the wall, and after the Napster online success, if they didn’t do it, someone else could. And just pull the player market under their feet, doing exactly what Apple did. The iTunes software was, if you remember, just some gizmo Apple came out with to be a jukebox solution on top of quicktime. Only after the Napster hit, and subsequent counterstrike from the Media Companies, it became the privileged interface to the iPod and the Online market. You say that they had to DRM the music to please the suits. Well, yes. But it played right into their interest.
I say they saw the scoop. And only for one thing they still didn’t brought the concept home. Because of the Beatles and the Apple brand.
Now with that out of the way, I bet you that they will become something like SONY. A hardware company and a Media company.
And once they start publishing music of their own I bet you’ll never will see DRM go away.
And more. Apple will kill the CD. It’s obvious. That’s what Jobs was really saying. He was pointing out to Media Companies, that they were wide open. They sell every day millions of completely unprotected CDs. And only someone with the vertical grip on the market like Apple, was safe on the Digital Age.
My prediction for the next few years:
The CD is dead, and online will be the only way to get music. And Apple will ride that wave.
And, like I’ve said before on the thread, for the time being the EU is just being overzealous, but I suspect I will be on EU’s side in the near future.
OK. I’m off… this is too long of a post… I’m tired.
Bye now.
Joao Carlos Teixeira.
CD Music may be dead…
But NOT the CD drive in the computer..
I would believe that the RIAA will try something..but thay have learned, alittle, from the past. that security IS easy to break.
with Apple, and PC, and Many coutires complaining about DRM and all the CRAP..
It will become easyier to get music.
But, until the corps LEARN, that cheap music is what they need to SELL music. Its all going to be a mess.