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Congress Ponders Opening up iTunes DRM

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the all-skate-everybody-skate dept.

hammeredpeon writes "Congress is debating whether or not to require that music shops keep their DRM open for interoperability. Apple wasn't present at the hearings, but Napster's CEO was, arguing that the market should make the decision about interoperability. Considering that previous standards (FireWire/USB, Betamax/VHS) have been decided by the market, could it be that Apple isn't big enough to keep the government out of its industry?"

1 of 610 comments (clear)

  1. Re:openness, competition by That's+Unpossible! · · Score: 5, Informative

    Face it, the iPod is killing everything else sales wise. As a result, nobody but Apple can legally sell music for it....

    Even if I ignored for the fact that the iPod actually also plays regular AAC and MP3 files in addition to Apple's fairplay-restricted files -- why the fuck does the government have to get involved?

    This is a market issue. If people were really tied to iTunes and sick of it, they'd buy something other than an iPod. It's not like the iPod is the only digital music device you can buy.

    --
    Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.