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?

[Unski]

Who are you people, and what have you done with the real slashdot?
We are the silent minority. We have abducted the usual sensationalising /. submitters and instated a new order. From now on we will have factual statements as headlines, succeeded by a fair and orderly discussion. This will necessitate a reduction in page views, and we are currently in attempts to re-negotiate the patronage of the OSDL in this respect. We are also engaged in a comprehensive review of /. sigs, and we will be removing any which are factually-incorrect. Furthermore we are seeking to remove the moderation category known as 'funny' and will replace it with 'idiosyncratic'.

Please remain calm, change is sometimes good.

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?

[gnugrep]

No that is wrong. Apple versions the fairplay, so if you bought the song before the change in rules, the old rules applies to this song. The new rules only apply to songs bought after the change.

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.

Re:France backs down?

[nuzak]

> Doesn't anyone remember that the Statue of Liberty was actually a gift from France to the US?

Most of the French-bashers on the right wing are aren't terribly interested in helping out the tired or the poor, and are more interested in turning the rest of us into huddled masses yearning to breathe free. I don't think they give much of a damn about the statue or the ideals it stood for.

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.

Cool!

[irn_bru]

Can we get Apple to deal with Iran as well...?

Apple=1 vs. Consumers=0

[Anonymous Coward]

I know that it isn't fashionable to not cheer on /. when Apple wins something, but in this case they clearly won against consumer rights, so maybe, just maybe, this time around we shouldn't cheer for Apple.

For a very good overview about the subject and a much better article than the one in the /. blurb, head over to arstechnica:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060501-6715 .html

"The legislation in question originally contained consumer-friendly provisions that would force technology companies to make their DRM schemes interoperable. This would have a potent effect on the dominance of Apple and iTunes, of course, since the Cupertino company has so far proved unwilling to license its Fairplay technology to anyone else. The non-interoperable nature of Fairplay has been crucial to the success of Apple's online music store, which has leveraged the popularity of the iPod to become the biggest seller of digital downloads on the Internet. ...
        * Previously, "information needed for interoperability" covered "technical documentation and programming interfaces needed to obtain a copy in an open standard of the copyrighted work, along with its legal information." Now this has been changed to "technical documentation and programming interfaces needed to obtain a protected copy of a copyrighted work." But a "protected" version of the work can't be played back in a different player, which means interoperability won't be attained with this clause.
        * Previously, the only condition for receiving information needed for interoperability was to meet the cost of logistics of delivering the information. Now, anyone wanting to build a player will have to take a license on "reasonable and non discriminatory conditions, and an appropriate fee." When using information attained under such a license, you will have to "respect the efficiency and integrity of the technical measure."
        * DRM publishers can demand the retraction of publication of the source-code for interoperable, independent software, if it can prove that the source-code is "harmful to the security and the efficiency of the DRM."

Re:Apple continues to rip off the UK

[oudzeeman]

I pay a state sales tax on the 99 cent track (it still only comes out to something around $1.04), but your VAT that is included in your price, is more than 5%).

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.

Re:Add This Defeat to the Military History of Fran

[TortiusMaximus]

Funny stuff. But you should give credit where credit is due, ya cheese eating plagiarist. http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/text/france.html

Close, but not quite...

[Garwulf]

Um, not quite, but close.

The earliest copyright-type of protection I know of is the Stationer's Log, which was used in England in Shakespeare's day, and it existed to protect publishers against other publishers. A publisher would buy a manuscript from a writer, and then register it in the Log, so that another publisher couldn't then publish their own version of it. The author had pretty much no rights whatsoever, but there was protections for the author in other ways. This was a time where most authors, poets, etc. were supported by wealthy patrons.

Around the time of the American Revolution there seems to be a change in the way copyright-style protections are being considered - the focus moves to the artist or creator, rather than the publisher. If you look at the American Constitution, there's a section that has the original version of this in the United States (I'm not sure how it manifests itself in Britain and Europe), and it's a limited span. This is very progressive for its day, as there's still patronage going on. The important thing in my mind is the recognition of the creator's rights to their work, something taken for granted in other industries.

Now, as time goes on and patronage disappears, the copyright span becomes longer, and this is logical, if you think about it. Without patronage, all that is left to support the artist is the artist's work. Controversy over copyright span after death aside, if you look at the Berne Convention just as a document outlining creator's rights, it really is quite logical and adaptive, and suitable to the here and now.

(Please note, I'm not talking about the DMCA here. The Berne Convention is quite old and fine-tuned, and it shows. It's a very elegant and logical document. The DMCA is brand new, trying to deal with new technologies that the legislators are still coming to grips with, and it shows too. Given time, I think it may develop into a very good piece of legislation that fits the technology, but it's not there yet by a long way.)

In my mind, the big problem right now isn't the creator's rights, but how they have been co-opted. It's not so big an issue in print publication, but look at who actually owns the rights to music and film. The film studios and record labels have basically co-opted the creator's rights by getting the artists to sign their rights away, and then exploiting those rights, cutting out the creators in the process. In many ways, it's a situation where what should be a just and fair system has been co-opted and abused beyond belief.

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 :)

Re:It is a Free Software Issue.

[pavon]

You may reverse-engineer Fairplay for purposes of interoperability. It even says so in the DMCA.

That is true, I can definately develop and use software to circumvent a copyright protection mechanism for interoperability reasons. However, the DCMA strictly prohibits me from distributing any such tools that enable circumvention even if I intend them merely for the exempted reasons. The jury is still out on whether that clause will stand, or more accurately in what specific circumstances that clause will hold up in court.

Even if distribution is allowed, the DCMA is not the only law that stands in the way. In particular, there are several patents on Fairplay standard, and without a license, it is not possible to write, distribute, and use this patented technology. There are exceptions that allow you to do some of those three some of the time, but never all three at the same time. For example, patent law does allow for implementation and distribution for educational purposes, but then anyone who used my software for non-educational purposes (even personal use) would run afoul of the law. This is the approach that LAME takes in it's license, which protects the developers but pushes liability onto the users.

I am legally prevented from writing, distributing or using Free Software that can play music encoded with Apple's Fairplay DRM.

To clarify I meant that "I can't do all these three", not "I can't do any of these three". There are three things that make Free Software Free - the freedom to modify, the freedom to distribute, and the freedom to use. If any one of these things are prohibited in a piece of software then it is not Free Software.