Slashdot Mirror
Virgin Accuses Apple of Abusing Monopoly
worm eater writes "The Register reports that VirginMega (Virgin Group's online music venture in France) is asking the French antitrust authorities to force Apple to license the FairPlay DRM. If France agrees with Virgin, will this be a blessing in disguise for Apple, making their DRM format the defacto standard, or will it be the downfall of the mighty iTunes Music Store?"
This raises and excellent question: Is Apple a:
A) Technology (I.P.) Company
or
B) Hardware Company
or
C) Service Company
Apple started as A & B and has dabbled in C, but IMS is solidy B & C. With their deals with Motorola (iPod tech in phones) and HP (own brand of iPod) they further A & C. If FairPlay becomes the defacto standard this places them squarely in the A camp again, which actually benefits Motorola and HP, among others who make hardware for them. Will Apple ever allow the Mac line to be made outside the company again, as it was in the Jean Louis Gassée days?
While it all looks rosy for Apple, I can plainly see now how both Sony and Microsoft want to plough into this market, so they can get it all wrong, make people mad (ATRAC3? I thought it said 8 Track!) (my mPod has been 0wn3d!) and lose lots of money.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
...will this be a blessing in disguise for Apple, making their DRM format the defacto standard
How exactly would this be a blessing in disguise? Wouldn't it just open the door to more iTunes-compatible players to compete with? Or does Apple stand to make a pretty penny by licensing FairPlay to the world?
Virgins!?! Apples!?!? It's all sounding very biblical to me. Leave it up to the Big Man to decide.
Le navigateur que vous utlisez ne vous permet de surfer sur ce site.
Pour surfer sur ce site nous vous recommandons d'utiliser Internet Explorer comme navigateur.
Looks like they don't want you using anything but IE to access their rather shitty site. Going in with IE, I can tell you it doesn't seem like there are any Windows-only features there that would justify not accepting other browsers; just doubtless lazy web design. Good example of a site to quote when somebody asks you for a major site that is incompatible with non-IE browsers.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Virgin claims that Apple is abusing a "dominant" position by not licensing its own DRM.
But "dominant" is not really applcable yet. Are they dominant in music sales overall? No way. Are they dominant in being able to play music you buy online? Not even that is true, since the percentage of PC's is so much larger than Macs.
Perhaps at some distant point, when online music sales erally exceed physical CD sales (if ever?) then Apple might be called "dominant". In this case it's like a black hole calling the kettle black.
There is even an out if they REALLY want to sell music that can play on an iPod - MP3. Just because that format lacks technological features they would like, does that really give them cause to proclaim Apple is a monopoly that should be forced to share?
It will be interesting to see what the courts make of it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
because PlayFair already cracked it and will allow us to unlock what we've purchased. The main site's taken down, but you can just google "playfair-0.5.0" or the like.
.m4a as well as .m4p files (as long as you have iTunes installed)
Or just burn to CD and re-encode, but who wants to waste cd's and time doing that?
There are also already plugins for Winamp that will play both
...at least for now. Unless Virgin can offer a music buying experience that works as seamlessly with the iPod as Apple's - since it's clear that they're trying to sell their tunes to iPod owners - then they'll still be missing the point. I suspect what most people dig most about the iTunes store is integration and ease of use. They aren't terribly concerned about file formats and rights managements schemes. Sure, some are - plenty here on Slashdot, for instance - but I doubt the average person is too concerned by that.
Plus, Apple's the cool music company right now. I just saw someone on the street this morning walking with her nice custom-made iPod purse which still clearly had an Apple logo on it, so you knew it was an iPod in there, and that she dug Apple. I suspect she'd use the iTunes store (except I'm in Canada, alas).
But then, I may be underestimating the tech literacy of the average person. I'd be glad if that were the case.
"Why can't everyone just be straight with me?"
"Because we live in a bendy world, dear."
...of a music company accusing anyone of being an unfair monopoly. And, just to double your irony goodness...accusing Apple.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
The article ignores the fact that Apple has licensed FairPlay from Veridisc. It was not created in-house. Now, they may have negotiated themselves an exclusive license for some period of time, and more power to 'em, but this is NOT "Apple imposing an Apple-proprietary standard" as some would have us believe.
Apple has just as much as a monopoly on FairPlay as Nike has on Air Jordans. That is, they have a monopoly on a product, not a monopoly on the music player/music store market. By revenue, Apple has a 55 percent market share for mp3 players. By units, only 31 percent. I don't know how much of a market share iTunes has, but FairPlay songs are only able to be played on 31 percent of mp3 players. Good luck crying monopoly in court on a company whose market share isn't even close to a majority.
They do have competitors, and those competitors are obliged to compete. If they can't, tough.
Virgin is just plain wrong. Forcing Apple to open FairPlay would be a miscarige of justice, there is no good reason to do it other than to stick it to Apple because other companies are mad they aren't as successfull.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Right, they haven't licensed the iPod to HP, and they haven't licensed iTunes for Motorola's cell phones, right?
GPL Deconstructed
Slight correction: iTunes is able to transcode WMA on Windows. iTunes on Mac OS X has no such capability.
Yaz.
Apple is not planning on living off of the iPod for the long term goal. They are planning on building the hub of your future digital lifestyle. Digital music, movies, communication, etc. DRM is key to that goal. Apple is just funding this project with the iPod. Eventually iTMS will will either dry up or redefine the music distribution model. I think the latter. Apple will develop an iMovie (iTV?) store as well. With Airport express or a similar product they'll be able to stream files to your entertainment center. Eventually your computer will become part of your entertainment center. Who wants to pay for 24x7 Cable or satelite service if you can pay for just the progamming you want to see/hear? In the end, there will probably be Apple computers, Monitors, Amplifiers, speakers, and a multipurpose digital recorder for audio and video. Video will be pay per view while audio will be owned.
Why doesn't anything interesting happen when I have mod points?
Ok, so, say for instance, a compay makes software that runs on only one platform. The software is an incredible hit and fuels the sale of this platform. Other companies want this killer app on their platform. Do they have a right to force the original company to make the software for their platforms?
Draw your own conclusions, but my opinion is thusly: hells freakin' no. Say my company makes software for Apple hardware (and by extension OSX) and it's so freakin' incredible that everyone goes out and buys OSX. No on, but _no one_ has the right to force me to port my app to their platform. It's _my_ software.
I see a similar thing here: Apple has this "app" (AAC wrapped in FairPlay) and it works on the iPod. Apple hasn't stopped anyone from writing other "apps" for the iPod (within the specs of the iPod, of course, just like you'd have to write hardware specific stuff for PPC), but it shouldn't be forced to license that "app" to anyone else.
Now, it _may_ be really good for them to let other people use FairPlay, but I don't feel I have the information I need to make that call.
Ne Cede Malis.
I think it's funny that a company called VirginMega is suing a company for being a monopoly. "Globex MegaCorp PanGalactic Enterprises is being harmed by Frank's PC Haus monopoly on the computer service business in Saginaw, Michigan. We are suing!"
I bet the French government will back Virgin just 'cause Apple's DRM wasn't programmed in French or something.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
"will this be a blessing in disguise for Apple, making their DRM format the defacto standard, or will it be the downfall of the mighty iTunes Music Store?"
What it WILL be, is a perfect reason for Virgin to buy up Real -- who recently reverse-engineered FairPlay -- as a new outlet for Virgin's catalogue, bypassing Apple.
The bigger the DRM mess becomes, the less likely it is to survive.
It's absolutely not right that we're buying file formats instead of content. Anything that muddies the DRM waters, as they currently exist, works for me.
If the FairPlay DRM is opened up for music stores, wouldn't also be possible for hardware manufacturers to then adopt it for their hardware? That would allow 3rd party devices to use iTunes Music Store and be one less advantage that the iPod would have.
Second: let's just look at this for a second. One of the StarMax machines included a custom-made PCI card with ethernet and something else (video? SCSI?) on it. The drivers were from Motorola. When the next version of the Mac OS came out, the card simply stopped working because of the way they'd written the drivers. Apple was called over the next week by hundreds of irate StarMax owners.
But I'm sure that if they had just been able to design their own motherboards, everything would have just worked fine and there wouldn't have been any problems with compatibility or anything.
As for the idea that the PowerTowers were the end-all and be-all of Mac-hood, only two things to say. One: they were cheaply made. Things broke. Hardware failed. The case was a generic PC case with flimsy drive-bay doors with plastic fittings that broke off under the slightest bit of pressure. The actual basic design was nice, but the execution *sucked*. And two, especially at that year's MacWorld Expo, PowerComputing sold significantly below cost, because they wanted to entice as many people away from buying a high-end Mac and into their camp. When Apple had really hired people on to cover the low-end while they tried to get the high-end business. Now, you can decide that this was a slimy thing for Apple to do, to try to get someone to shore up their weaknesses rather than steal their best customers. And that's a valid point of view, I suppose. But when it turned around and Apple saw a whole lot of lost sales to people who otherwise would have definitely been buying the highest-end Mac kit, they got miffed.
I would've too. And having worked on a number of Mac clones back then, as a techie, I have to say that none of them were engineered even as well as the PM8500. Which in and of itself was one of the most bone-headed piece of engineering as I have ever seen in all my days.
But at least it was STURDY bone-headed engineering.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.