digital music/video
01/04/2006, 5:35pm, EST
Wednesday, January 4th
Apple licensing, DRM bad for consumers?
With the largest Apple/Mac-centric show approaching, one columnist believes that Mac faithful's undying devotion to Steve Jobs is bad for consumers. Technology Review's Brad King says that Jobs' deal with the entertainment industry and its DRM practices are bad for consumers, according to a recent column that talks about the restrictive iPod/iTunes ecosystem: "owever, that's not what really, really sticks in my craw. I reserve that (possibly irrational) anger for the iPod and iTunes, two music products that are so restrictive in their licensing and user set-ups that I have never been able to bring myself to download the software to purchase music through iTunes or pony up the cash to by an iPod." Despite Jobs' efforts to take on the music labels over pricing, King notes that the company has towed the music industry line in terms of licensing and digital rights management (DRM).
"That said, even that restrictive licensing doesn't ultimately get to me. Every company has the right to set up the terms of use (within reason), and that is the road Apple chose to go down. The problem is they've been so compliant with the entertainment industry -- foisting ridiculous digital rights management on consumers -- that they may very well be setting the table for the music and movie industries to expand their restrictive licensing to entirely new platforms."
Filed under: industry
Other story tags: digital music/video
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What he's all worked up about is that Apple totally controls the digital player market and a major slice of the digital download market, not the DRM itself. I personally have predicted the demise of the iTunes/iPod infrastructure if it isn't opened up and licensed to others, but so far I've been dead wrong.
I however don't mind it, and don't find it restrictive as my family has 4 iPods and I share across profiles fine, and once in a while still burn a CD as waiting to install a NON FM solution for listening in my vehicle.
That's "*toed* the music industry line . . ." While it is a common usage, the "towed" metaphor means nothing.
...what does the iPod have to do with DRM? Sure it supports FairPlay DRM but it does NOT require it. This guy head down to an Apple store and try an iPod.
...something about baby and bath water come to mind...
You are free to back up your purchased songs to any media you like or copying them to any number of computers. FairPlay doesn't restrict you from doing that.
In fact you can even burn your music to a standard CD that you can play in any CD player.
It's also fairly well publicized that if a fire burns down your house and all the CD's in it, you also lose all your music.
It's your computer...back it up!