Apple Defeats RIAA and France In Same Day

gnat writes "The subheading of the CNN article says it all: 'Four largest record companies defeated in behind-the-scenes battle to charge different prices for songs; downloads still 99 cents'. This comes the same day as France backed down on the posturing over demanding iPod interoperability." From the France article: "Apple, which did not return repeated phone calls, and other DRM holders doing business in France, are likely elated. While the law must still be voted on, the alterations in the legislation signify willingness by some in the French government to honor the rights of companies that don't wish to share their technology with competitors. Senate debate on the bill begins Thursday."

Comments

France backs down?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

*sighs*

Why didn't the submitter go with the more trollish (and lets face it, the comments will decsend to this level in a few seconds) headline the inquirer took: French committee surrenders on DRM law

Let's all remember that while we would normally blindly follow Apple's lead in this, it is a Free software issue as well as being an Apple (yay) vs France (boo) issue.

Like Microsoft (with word documents, SMB, etc), or Adobe (with encrypted PDFs), Apple should not persecute F/OSS users for attempting to interoperate with their products.

Re:France backs down?

[jkrise]

I don't think it's a Free Software issue at all... even in France. It's Apple's product and technology - they can do whatever they please. If their product became a monopoly.. then, maybe the specs for inter-operation to be dislosed. And unlike MS, Apple hasn't used any illegal means to obtain leading market share.

Re:France backs down?

[GundamFan]

Apple should not persecute F/OSS users

It's not persecution... I don't think Steve has a taskforce specificaly to chase Linux users around with sticks (sorry the over use of that word gets to me).

If you choose to buy from ITMS you know exactly what you are getting, and while the argument that there should be Linux support for Apples products is valid that does not mean that everyone gets to whine about it... iPods play .mp3s and there are plenty of places to buy unencombered .mp3 music files... you may have to make some sacrifices in selection of products but anyone who is without any windows box should be used to that.

I don't mean to be harsh but we are talking about a recreational item here it's not like iTunes music and iPods serve a vital purpose.

Re:France backs down?

[CastrTroy]

Yes, but you know what you are getting into when you buy iTunes. With MS Word, there's no choice, because of monopoly. If you want to buy movies, then you have to buy DVD. Protected PDF, WMA and Fairplay fall into another category. There are other solutions. You don't like iTunes? Go buy the CD. Buy music from Real, or Napster, or listen to the radio. I don't think Corel released their specs for wordperfect files either. The monopoly status is what changes the rules.

Re:France backs down?

[jocknerd]

But proponents of Apple's DRM will argue that the music CAN be played on other players. You just have to convert it. Its a pain, but Apple does give you that option.

The real problem is that the RIAA, in all their infinite wisdom, is screwing themselves. They demanded DRM, and now its biting them in the ass. Without DRM, Apple wouldn't have the leverage to dictate the pricing on songs.

Re:France backs down?

[Thrudheim]

Yes, Apple did reduce the number of times a playlist could be burned from 10 to 7. This would apply to people who update their iTunes software and accept the new licensing terms. You are under no obligation to do this, of course. If the DRM change was so terrible, it wouldn't be worth updating iTunes.

The changes have not been terrible, however. FairPlay has been around for a few years now and this is the worst example you can come up with? The restriction is completely trivial to anyone's "personal use" of the music. Slight changes to a playlist resets the counter on the number of burns. Hell, add a "song" that has two seconds of silence and you've got a new playlist. It is just not worth complaining about. How many copies of a playlist do you need?

Moreover, you conventiently forget to mention that Fairplay was at the same time liberalized to allow a person to play their music purchased from the iTMS on five computers instead of three, something that is helpful for people who want their music at work and on multiple machines at home. It was a trade, in other words, that liberalized a restriction that people *did* face and tightened one that people rarely face. Evil Apple.

The Breakdown & The Irony

[eldavojohn]

A breakdown in profits of the 99 cents per song from MacNN:

"But figures from the US show that Apple, the dominant legal download business in Europe and the US, retains just 4 cents from each 99-cent (55p) track sale while 'mechanical copyright' holders - generally the record labels, who own copyright in the song's recording - take 62 cents or more. Music publishers take the rest - about 8 cents."

I remember reading this article back in December of '05. In it, there is a little blurb of the same nature:

But what price is "fair"? Apple says it is 99 cents a song. Of this, Apple gets a sliver--4 cents--while the music publishers snag 8 cents and the record companies pocket most of the rest. Even though record companies earn more per track from downloads than CD sales, industry execs have been pushing for more. One option is a tiered pricing model, with the most popular tunes selling for as much as $3. After all, the music honchos reason, people pay up to $3 for cell-phone ring tones, mere snippets of songs.

I found that interesting. Executives that have nothing to do with the end product (probably haven't ever even picked up an instrument) are constantly arguing that they should be charging more and padding their pockets.

Being a bass player, I'm concerned about what's left over for the musician. Very concerned.

Weren't all the commercials and marketing schemes out there to make me feel guilty for the musician when I illegally share music? Perhaps they should have been showing me pictures of an executive in his Lexus ... unable to afford a Lamborghini Diablo becuase I was file sharing ... *runs to his room crying in shame*

Re:The Breakdown & The Irony

[Znork]

"Weren't all the commercials and marketing schemes out there to make me feel guilty"

Copyright or other intellectual 'property' has never been for the artists and creators sake. The creators have merely been the excuse, once owning a printing press and being friendly with the crown was no longer considered reason enough to get a monopoly.

Remember, copyright was created to protect publishers from cheap books, not to ensure payment to creative talent.

Aside from the troll clichés and all...

[Scrameustache]

France has a long history of industrial protectionism. Their entire televesion system was designed to be different from everyone else's to promote their local industry.

So, as much as I dislike DRM, I think theirs was just such a move.

Re:Add This Defeat to the Military History of Fran

[Frangible]

It's true, the French have been standing up where we've backed down lately. People called them not capitulating in the Iraq war cowardice, but they stood their moral ground and weren't sheep-- the Edward J. Murrows of the world aren't cowards. But as you mention they also stand against some Islamic cultural and religious tradition that we're even afraid to.

And if you've watched Stephen Colbert's recent White House press dinner speech, you'll note the only person in the room who had the balls to do that was a French descendant.

It's all sort of silly, anyway... Germans and French share the same common ancestry. The history of warfare in general is that everyone loses... look at the American wars throughout history. We lost most of them. Korea? Vietnam? Moghidishu? We didn't do jack in WW1 and in WW2 we entered the European theater late and fought against outnumbered Hitler Youth and reserve troops while the great bulk of German troops, especially the most veteran and well equipped divisions, were defeated by Russia.

Anyway, point being, it's fun to laugh at France, but maybe this is more of a story of how corporations exert political control than anything.

It is a Free Software Issue.

[pavon]

I am legally prevented from writing, distributing or using Free Software that can play music encoded with Apple's Fairplay DRM. Therefore it is a Free Software issue. It may be one that you don't care about, but it is one. That said, Free Software and DRM Software are inherently incompatible as DRM is an encryption scheme that requires you to both widely distribute the key and keep it secret at the same time. The only way to do this is by obscuring the key in software or hardware. Therefore, the only way to implement DRM as Free Software and follow the letter of the law, is if the keys are in hardware, and there is no way to do so while following the spirit of the law. So the only solution to the Free Software issue is no DRM.

It is also a free market issue - unlike most other media formats and DRM schemes (CSS, HDMI, WMA) which can be licensed by any party under RAND terms, Fairplay is not available for license. This is helping Apple to create a monopoly, by sheltering it from competition due to legal restrictions, rather than basing it's success solely on the merit of the product (which is does have).

Lastly Microsoft didn't get to be a monopoly (in it's OS) through illegal means. Like all other OSes at the time, they lived and died with the system it was written for. The IBM PC had the advantages of people wanting to use the same machine as at work and later of low costs due to commoditization. The other PC's couldn't compete with this, and thus died. Microsoft rose to dominance because the IBM PC rose to dominance. Everything else (even their very real illegal acts) is noise.

Frankly, I have always thought our antitrust laws were pretty stupid. We give companies huge amount of anti-competitive powers through "IP", and practically unrestricted mergers, and then wait until they inevitably become monopolies (or oligopolies) to enforce a bunch of hollow antitrust laws that do little more than waist time in court. Why wait until someone is a monopoly to start caring about promoting a free competitive market?

Lastly, and most importantly, it is a consumers rights issue. If I have legally obtained documents, I will view them as I please - whether the person trying to restrict me from doing so is a monopoly or not is of no consequence.

</rant> (haven't had my cherios this morning :)