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Video iPod Apple's First Bad Move?
An anonymous reader writes "Apple has had a lot of success with the iPod brand the past few years. The NYT has an article up wondering if, just maybe, this week's release of the video iPod was too soon." From the article: "Everyone from Microsoft to Comcast - in other words, the usual suspects - is working on or looking at similar pocket-size recorders. At least two companies, Pace Micro Technology of Britain and Samsung of South Korea, have said they plan to introduce models early next year. There is also TivoToGo, a service that can forward recorded shows to various mobile devices, even Sony PSP handheld gaming units ... [anyway,] the video iPod only has it half right: if it took material from the television as readily as it did from the Internet, it could be a blockbuster. But then who would pay $1.99 to download an episode of 'Lost' from iTunes if the iPod could also hook up to your television and record that same episode free? Unlike its musical forebear, the video iPod may not be ready for prime time. "
QuickTime Pro will export MP4 QVGA video with the new "Export for iPod" function. On a Mac, it comes up with an iTunes icon and a double click puts it in iTunes and read for the iPod (my new iPod hasn't come in yet, but I imagine there will be no problems). I've already converted a few shows I exported from my eyeTV.
I wanted a 60 GB iPod anyway, and would have bought one without video - the video is just an extra, like the games in the original iPod, or contacts in the 2G/3G/4G, or photos in the 4G+.
The video iPod is getting all of the attention, but that's not the whole story.
Apple is moving into the living room. That means video, and Apple is getting started with a three-pronged strategy:
* Front Row
* iTunes Video Store
* iPod with video
It would not make sense for Apple to make the move into video and leave the video iPod out of it.
Free, legal music for iTunes users.
When the 1st ipod came out in 2001 there was no itunes music store, no cottage industry of ipod accessories, no support for PCs and no cult of ipod. The only way to get music on your ipod was to rip cds yourself or download mp3s and get access to a Mac.
Now it's 2005 and the ipod is firmly entrenched in the American psyche and it is easy to get audio onto an ipod but difficult to get video on it unless you rip dvds or download optimized movie files yourself. The situation is hardly any different.
The difference is that in Apple's home country, ripping CDs is legal (RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia) while ripping DVDs is illegal under the DMCA (MGM v. 321 Studios).
Why can't someone, who owns a DVD of a movie, use Quicktime or something, and rip and encode a version for their iPod? Seems like a FAIR USE to me.
It was, until October 1998 when the 105th Congress of the United States enacted the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that made it a crime 1. to break the CSS encryption on DVD Video titles except in the way prescribed by the copyright owner, or 2. to sell devices capable of doing so. Don't blame me; it was the world I was born into, and I was too young in November 1996 to have voted for the 105th Congress.
The law specifically states that fair use is a defense
to copyright infringement. Fair use as interpreted by federal appeals courts in Universal v. Reimerdes and MGM v. 321 Studios is not a defense to circumvention, which is separate from copyright infringement, nor is it a defense to selling circumvention devices, which is also separate from copyright infringement.