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Norway Outlaws iTunes
haddieman notes that while many people are getting more and more annoyed at DRM, Norway actually did something about it. The PC World article explains: "Good intentions, questionable execution. European legislators have been giving DRM considerable attention for a while, but Norway has actually gone so far as to declare that Apple's iTunes store is illegal under Norwegian law.
The crux of the issue is that the Fairplay DRM that is at the heart of the iTunes/iPod universe doesn't work with anything else, meaning that if you want access to the cast iTunes library, you have to buy an iPod."
Now, when are they going to outlaw all the other DRM-infested music stores? If "Fairplay" is unfair, then so is "PlaysForSure!"
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
haddieman notes that while many people are getting more and more annoyed at DRM, Norway actually did something about it.
It sounds like they've decided it's either Norway or the Highway.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Bah! If I want to play Wii games, I have to buy a Wii. Outlaw the Wii.
If iTunes is illegal, only criminals with have iTunes.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
Kenya Kenya Kenyaaaaa....
"Not letting them use DRM" would be a Hell of a lot better than what Norway's actually doing, which is giving Microsoft's "PlaysForSure" DRM (which is just as proprietary!) preferential treatment.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Gaaa!
Norway == socialists == doubleplus good
DRM == doubleplus ungood
iTunes == Apple == doubleplus good
Norway outlaws iTunes? What is a good gay socialist Mac user going to do? What is the right side to be on?
Ok, trolling is fun and all, but seriously.
I think it's a load. People have the right to be stupid. Without that as Right 0 no other "Right" can be read as anything other than "You have the Right to ____ unless we, the anointed elite, think decide your exercise of it is dumb." It's why the 1st Amendment is safe so long as -both- Noam Chomsky and StormFront were free to rant and rave but didn't survive John McCain & Russ Feingold.
I'd never buy from the iTunes store because I think the deal offered is one sided, shortsighted and stupid. But I'll defend Steve's Right to try to sell it and your Right to freely enter into a license agreement with him.
Democrat delenda est
I don't like that comparison. For starters, Gillette don't have much of a choice since there is no standard format for razer blades. In addition, there are replicated blades available on the market for a lower price. iTunes, on the other hand, uses common software but has intentional limitations set to it.
Also, when you are in a dominant position as an online music store, you kind of have advantages over all of the competition, so what they're doing is more related to what Microsoft did with Internet Explorer.
Last but not least, you must remember that newly formed laws on computer software cannot be compared to the laws of items.
Full Tilt
It's not so much that you need an iPod to enjoy your itunes purchases, but that you are locked into future hardware purchases from Apple
If you buy many albums from the iTunes sture you can enjoy them and all is rosy. Then two years later the battery on your iPod has died, so you look at what's available. You think there are some nice offerings from creative or sandisk but, trouble is, you can't listen to any of your existing purchases. Your locked to Apple.
It's well boyond time that other players were allowed to license Fairplay, and that other music providers be allowed to sell Fairplay encoded tracks.
There's a solid technical reason why Wii games only run on a Wii. Technical incompatibility of DRM-locked music, however, is a purely artificially imposed barrier to interoperability. It's gratuitous incompatibility.
Imagine that every car manufacturer operated a chain of gas stations. All cars could run on the same fuel, but every brand of car had a bizarrely shaped fuel intake that would only accept the corresponding bizarrely shaped nozzle. You could only fill up a Toyota at a Toyota gas station, a Ford and a Ford station, etc.
Further, if you dared to try to create adapter for universal fueling, you'd be thrown in jail and fined tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for violating the laws the big car companies paid politicians all around the world to pass, to protect there little lock-in schemes.
You could either go along with such BS, and happily sing the tune the car companies want you to sing ("If you don't like it, you can don't have to buy a car! No one's forcing you! Just by a bicycle and shut up already!"), or you could cheer along the efforts to end protected for deliberately imposed incompatibility and improve things for consumers instead.
What I found interesting about this article is that it seems to advocate one choice is better than no choice, and implies Norway is harming its citizens and consumers by depriving them of a monopoly.
This tends to be the self serving argument monopolists use when justifying their actions. "By enhancing the user experience by bundling a product the user experience is enhanced. Depriving them of our monopolistic business model harms them."
In my view, choice is never bad. Competition is good. Apple won their market share by out-innovating the rest of the pack. But history is full of examples of the stagnation occurs once a market is consolidated. So I think other players should be allowed to work with iTunes.
Really? Then show me where I can get a software player not made by Microsoft capable of playing PlaysForSure Media! In particular, show me where I can get one that works on operating systems other than Windows!
The only "fair" regulations would be ones that outlaw DRM entirely. To do what they've actually done -- especially when done in the name of "protecting consumers" -- is a farce!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
There's a big difference between forcing a software company to expend the enormous effort that would be required to make a piece of software run on multiple OSes, and telling a music distributor that they shouldn't gratuitously add artificially imposed incompatibility.
Obviously I must be a moron then, because when I tried that this message popped up:
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Really? Then show me where I can get a software player not made by Microsoft capable of playing PlaysForSure Media! In particular, show me where I can get one that works on operating systems other than Windows!
My Sansa connects to Winamp because of Playsforsure.
I don't respond to AC's.
This headline (and the one at PC World) is quite misleading. Norway has not outlawed ITMS. It has simply been found that ITMS is not following the law in Norway. This means that ITMS has always been illegal. You can blame Apple for not checking the law in the market they were entering (or checking, but deciding that the law doesn't apply to them).
Consumer protection laws can sometimes be a big pill for corporations to swallow, but if Norway is anything like Denmark, which is quite likely, they usually end up having to follow the rules, rather than getting the rules changed to suit them.
It'd be a longshot, but maybe they could extend that to their practices regarding OS X and their hardware? Repackaging it in a desired format with spare parts gets you in trouble these days if you sell it, much less the hardware binding. They'd not need to ban OS X, just remove the restrictions on interoperability and hardware use.
Of course, fanboi's will come far and wide to dispute this- but not all of us like their products in "Ivory Tower" white as a majority, in non-ATX forms, or even the architecture they bless. I'll take a clone or a custom built machine, and run whatever, however - economics be damned.
Hopefully at least the iTMS ban holds up and works.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Umm... Until the ill-fated Zune (my, isn't THAT cynical of me), Microsoft never made their own music player. So I have no idea where you got you're info, but it's quite incorrect.
/. minions were crying about just a few years ago in US v. MSFT?
It's not a farce. They're pushing to enforce consumer choice. Isn't that what the
Go re-read my post, and you'll see you missed the keyword: "software." I'm not complaining about the Zune, I'm complaining that I can't legally write myself an alternative to Windows Media Player that works on Linux and plays "PlaysForSure" media!
The only way to actually do that effectively is to outlaw DRM entirely, because DRM is inherently antithetical to choice.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
What really happened is that the consumer ombudsman stated that FairPlay was, in his opinion, illegal. The ombudsman is not a court, nor a judge, nor a legislature. The easiest comparison to make is that he's like an attorney general, but rather than advise the govt, he advises consumers, and acts on their behalf, subjectively. The most he can do is recommend a prosecution to the director of prosecutions, but his opinion is not, repeat not law. TFA is stupid and badly researched.
- Nullsoft Winamp
- Amazon Unbox video player
- Musicmatch Jukebox
I don't think one exists, but I don't know if software companies are prohibited from obtaining PlaysForSure licenses for software players on other operating systems. Nullsoft, MusicMatch, and Amazon could obtain PlaysForeSure licenses for their Windows software. I have seen no evidence that Flip4Mac has been prohibited from obtaining a PlaysForSure license for their Windows Media Components for QuickTime.Can I play my purchased music from services such as the new Napster, MusicMatch, MusicNow, or BuyMusic.com through Winamp 5?
Yes. Yes you can.
In contrast, other software companies are prohibited from licensing FairPlay. Some companies want to license FairPlay so that their software can play iTunes Store media, but Apple refuses to license their DRM.
That said, I'm not sure if I agree with Norway's decision to ban FairPlay. This might be excessive regulation.
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
So does that mean that Zune and Sony's Atrak and WMA are also banned? All of those only play on one brand of machine or operating system.
Well what about software that only runs on one operating system? After Ipods can run other operating system sso it's not the ipod that is doing the lock-in it's the operating system on the ipod.
By that reasoning all windows software is windows only and must be banned.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I'm just watching BBC World, where a guy called Torgeir Waterhouse from the Norwegian Consumer Council talks about this. When asked about competitors like Microsoft and the Zune, he said they are all illegal under Norwegian law. They only went after iTunes first because it's largest.
Well, Norway isn't in the EU.
WMA can be licensed for all kinds of devices, and I suspect that Sony would be overjoyed to license the file format.
Zune--probably, but the 3 people who own one haven't made much of a fuss yet.
Vista's "SUPER DRM" doesn't lock you into any particular hardware. That DRM is required for HD-DVD and BR playback, but any HD-DVD and BR player as well as OSX Leopard also implement that same DRM and can therefore play those discs. So there's no hardware lockin, unlike with iTMS DRM'ed songs, which only play on Apple's hardware as far as portable players are concerned.
(If you widen your view beyond portable players, then iTMS isn't *that* locked in since iTMS songs do play on regular Macs and Windows computers via the iTunes app).
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Norway isn't in the European Union. I'm pretty sure Apple would lobby pretty strongly to get its way in the EU, but Norway, and the Norwegian market being pretty small, I don't think Apple thinks its worth it, and would rather lose that market.
In essence, as a Mac and iPod user, I don't like this, but in principle it should apply to everybody, including Microsoft's Zune, which isn't even compatible with Microsoft's own Plays For Sure brand, and that name is terribly ironic.
Still, I don't really care. If I can't listen to music because of DRM, then I'll make my own or go and watch a Bach recital or something (until Microsoft/Sony/RIAA or whatever make playing music in public illegal unless you pay them for it)
Every windowsOS device that runs quicktime plays apple fairplay drm. for example an OQO is a pocket itunes playing device. What do they mean fairlplay only plays on ipods. Conversely you don't have to buy fairplay music to play it on your ipod. You can buy or load MP3s.
So I don't get it. You can play itunes/fairplay on tonnes of devices not made by apple. and you don't have to buy itunes software.
Moreover here's a hypothetical. Suppose the itunes software had two buttons on it. One button was marked "load my ipod with some music I bought at the itunes store" and the other button was marked "load my non-apple music player with some music I bought at the itunes music store".
Would that satisfy the norweigans? well itunes already has those features, just the buttons are marked differently. The second button is marked "convert my itunes music to something my non-apple player can play".
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
You'll get a software media player for Linux that can play PlaysForSure media just as soon as someone licenses PlaysForSure, develops and sells such a product. Absolutely nothing at all is preventing someone from doing this, however there are licensing costs and stipulations which would certainly prevent this "open source" thing you espouse so zealously. It would be just like a legal software DVD player for Linux.
Of course, Apple doesn't license FairPlay to anyone, so while it is possible for a legal PlaysForSure player to be released for Linux, you're really SOL with FairPlay. Keep defending them, though. It doesn't really make you look like a complete and total prat.
According to the above posts, Norway is pissed that iTMS's DRM locks you into Apple hardware, and is therefore illegal (nevermind that iTMS songs do play on any Mac and Windows computer via the iTunes app).
But what about video game consoles? If one wants to play "Gears of War", one is locked into Microsoft's Xbox 360 hardware. Same for any console wrt games exclusive to that console. Is Norway going to outlaw video game consoles as well?
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
http://www.forbrukerombudet.no/index.gan?id=110370 79&subid=0
:)
its a must read for everyone! it explains everything