EU Officials Cautious on AntiTrust Issues

An anonymous reader writes "News.com has a piece up looking at reactions from EU officials to the iTMS antitrust case. The individuals involved are wary of cracking open the DRM that protects the music sold at the iTunes Music Store." From the article: "One of the most outspoken government advocates on the issue is Norwegian consumer ombudsman Bjorn Erik Thon, who said he would act soon depending on how Apple responds to a letter the government had sent the company. If Apple can require an iPod for songs via iTunes, then music, book and film companies might restrict their products to specific players too, he said."

Comments

Re:I'll be worried about this

[Golias]

Well, the PSP is made by a major movie company. Yet, oddly, you can still buy any UMD movie on other formats.

Likewise, you can buy the same albums you see in iTMS from your local CD store, or in some cases from other music download sites. So what, exactly, is the problem?

I used to buy a lot of music from iTMS, but since I've started using my computer as the main playback device on my living-room stereo, I've come to demand lossless formats. Besides, if you want the full album it's usually a better deal to hunt down a used CD.

(I now generally only buy iTMS songs if it's just one tune that I want, and I'm mostly going to be listening in the car or some other setting where I don't care about hi-fi. For example, I recently downloaded "All the Time in the World" by the Subdudes. It's a great summer crusin' song, but I don't give a crap about the rest of the album. So that amounts to about three or four songs a month, which is a fairly small fraction of my music purchases. If iTMS starts offering lossless formats, I might go back to buying large quantities from them, since it is a hell of a lot more convenient than driving to the store... but for now I'm mostly off the bandwagon.)

Ombudsman in reality a Microsoft Shill

[Been on TV]

We understand what the Norwegian Ombudsman and his department is saying, but in reality his is acting as a Microsoft shill. His department has never lifted a finger to make sure Microsoft DRM protected material is available to non-Microsoft customers in Norway.

Best example of this is the government, (mandatory) license financed "Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation" (public TV and radio) that publish all their video content in Microsoft DRM protected format. The Ombudsman has done nothing to ensure that this material truely is available to the public; only to Microsoft customers. There are other public institutions in Norway as well that publish Microsoft DRM protected content only.

If the ombudsman is eager to enforce Norwegian legislation in this area, he should first make sure the very government institutions and structure his department is a part of is in compliance with the law, before starting to go after one private company.

Re:No, you don't, and few people do.

[Fred_A]

I too don't understand what the "hassle" is...

Ripping a CD is just starting one of the many CD ripping utilities, clicking once (possibly twice depending on the utility), waiting for the disk to pop out and archiving it. That's what I do whenever I buy a new CD. Then I synced my ~/Media/sound/MP3 tree with my iRiver H320 (now lost —whine— waiting for a Creative replacement) every now and then.

Once every 3 months, I have to enter the track info myself because they don't seem to be on the freedb (or because I don't like the way they have been entered). Ok, that's sort of a minor hassle.

Maybe in Windows it's really horribly complicated but somehow I doubt it...