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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."
The problem is the music industry does not allow anyone else to sell in a less restricted format.
And cd's are not an example of this, they now contain some of the most virulent DRM ever produced. Since they are not encrypted they now come bundled with software which roots your system and incapacitates it to varying degrees based on which company made it.. and no i'm not just talking about XCP/sony rootkit drm either..
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
That is right, Apple, iTunes, RIAA, sueing kids, that is what capitalism is all about. Norway isn't a capilalist country, the is socialist or by american standard, communist. Apple wants to sell in Norway then it got to play by norwegian rules.
Companies are free from not entering the european market. But Apple wants to have their cake and eat it too. Just because americans have a goverment that is so cheaply bought doesn't mean the rest of the world works the same.
Good job Norway. What do you know, a goverment official looking out for the people. It must be a cold day in hell.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Nice try, but no dice. First off the article is wrong.
no the article is not wrong, you yourself keep vascillating between not buying hbo and not buying the media center, you prove the article's point. Some people will choose not to buy HBO.. others will choose not to buy the media center.. the point is that all this collusion, which should be illegal, results in a division of response by consumers which destroys the consumer's effect on correcting the market.
Now your claim that you cannot buy from another vendor in a non-commodity market is also wrong. It's only true in a real monopoly situation where this in no possible substitute effect on the good.
so tell me who else besides MGM sells stargate SG1? oh i'm not hearing you.. that's right MGM is a complete monopoly.. and they demand DRM.. and guess what, anyone who wants to sell without restrictions the way the customer wants.. well they can go cry in the corner ther is no substitute for that show. so guess what, every electronics manufacturer is forced to sell a DRM product and there is no real choice there.
In the Apple music case, this means that if the only way to buy music was from iTMS, then people would have no choice but to buy music from Apple. Thus they could also only buy an iPod if they wanted a music player that they could download music to from their computer. However, this is clearly not the case.
yes it is, let me debunk these "options" 1 by one.
They can buy new CDs from many differents stores or order them online.
cd's with rootkits and DRM which disable their computers, then present them with only one format to keep them from transferring it to portable music players of their choice, next?
They can buy used CDs. see above.. next?
They can also buy other digital versions, from vendors like Yahoo, Napster, and Urge.
which would then have them locked into microsoft the same way apple's itunes locks people into DRM.. oh yeah and they dont work on mac or linux, next?
Not to mention that most digital music is downloaded over P2P networks currently.
good point but that is considered illegal and therefore "illegitimate", you get sued for excercising that "choice".
so your examples are: go with this company's DRM, or that company's DRM, or risk getting your computer rooted and disabled, or risk being sued into bankruptcy or even prosecuted for going to the one truly interoperable option of illegal downloading.
I'm sorry but those are not real choices, they are all DRM lockins stemming from the same monopoly source which always demands DRM.
Now if you were to repeal the DMCA this would cease to be the case and there would be true choice. As it is now my argument still stands.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
I'm unsure of what exactly it means to be advantaging themselves in the 'music jukebox software' space. Their music jukebox software is free.
Are the developers who work on it paid? If so, then it is not free, it is "bundled." That is to say, you pay the cost of it when you buy other products. This is fine and people use this technique all the time, right up until you bundle it with something you have a monopoly on and for which there is an existing, competitive market.
The question at hand is whether their owning the iPod and using that to encourage users to utilize a particular service for content (iTMS) is illegal/wrong.
Bundling is the first form of tying used as an example in US law, when discussing illegal actions for a monopoly. EU law treats it just the same way. MS was convicted of giving their media player away for free with Windows. How is Apple giving their iTunes program away with iPods and different? (assuming Apple is ruled to have a monopoly)?
Apple makes money selling/licensing songs. That is pretty clearly a market. Lots of other people also sell song downloads. If Apple gains an advantage due to an existing monopoly, they are breaking the law.
All of the anti-trust arguments rest on Apple's market share. In turn, in order for the iTMS to be relevant, it seems to me that you'd have to prove the availability of iTMS on the iPod and NOT on other players to be a factor in the purchasing decision of the iPod.
No. No. No. Antitrust law isn't about stopping a monopoly from maintaining that monopoly. It is about stopping them from leveraging that monopoly into more monopolies and thereby bypassing the competitive marketplace. Assuming Apple has a monopoly with the iPod and they tie the iPod to ITMS (which they do), then Apple gains an advantage. Suppose ITMS and the Napster service are both about the same quality. In a free market, customers would decide which is better and everyone would win as they struggle against one another to make better services and lower prices. Because Apple has a monopoly on iPods and because ITMS is tied to the iPod, it gains an advantage. This is not because it is better, just because Apple has tied it to the iPod and won't let Napster do the same. So maybe Napster loses in the market instead of wins. An inferior product has gained market share. Customers end up using that inferior product. The market has failed.
Fast forward five years. Apple has a monopoly on both music players and music downloads. They tie each to another new product and take over two more markets, despite not innovating a better product in that market. This can continue ad infinitum until only a few monopolies dominate all markets. That is why it is illegal.
The iPod was a massive hit before iTMS was doing well, and iTMS is an effort to capitalize on a much bigger product - the sale of iPOD hardware.
And that is fine, right up until Apple has a monopoly on that first product... then it becomes illegal for them to capitalize upon it to take over new markets.
Rather, they're using their market position to encourage people to buy music through iTMS, because it's easier than ripping CDs. Making things easier is not monopolistic; making *other* things *harder* deliberately is. The former is innovation. The latter is anticompetitive.
You don't seem to understand antitrust law at all, either the purpose or the laws themselves. Using a monopoly market position to encourage people to buy anything in another market is illegal, because it stifles innovation in the other market. Why should Apple make a better music service if they can more easily gain market share by leveraging the iPod and bundling it with their monopoly? You definition of monopolistic is way off. Monopolistic does not mean "bad" it means controlling an entire market.
Leveraging a market position to sell more of something is not illegal.
Leveraging a monopoly market position to sell more of something in anot