Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
AAC has nothing to do with FairPlay, Apple, or anything else, for that matter. AAC is a completely open format that was meant to replace the MP3 (and should, but old habits die hard), Apple didn't want to use Vorbis because it requires a lot more battery power to encode... and people already bitch about battery life. FairPlay could theoretically be inserted into any number of file formats, it's just that Apple only uses AACs for music transfer.
So, again, neither of the As in AAC stands for Apple, it's an MP4 compression container file, that Apple bought in to... and most of the other companies are too busy with WMA and MP3 that they haven't bought into it yet. It's like saying that HD-DVD is a Microsoft format... no, it's a Toshiba format, in which Microsoft now uses.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
Zune hasn't been released outside of the US, but it seems pretty definite that it'd be affected by the same rule. ATRAC is an encoding format, not a DRM system; the difference being that it's not designed to stop other people reading it, it's just not used by other people. Also, ATRAC is implemented by other manufacturers; Sony did not say "no, you may not licence or use this because we want to be the only ones to use it".
It's not the iPod which is in trouble, it's the store, and its policy of only being compatible with iPods (and the converse; iPods only playing music from one DRMed store). This is an artificial constraint, the only reason other companies can't run iTMS music on their players or provide DRMed music that plays on an iPod is that Apple won't let them. By contrast, operating systems only run one type of executable because executables are complicated and can be implemented in a variety of ways. It's not like there's anything stopping people writing software which allows someone to run programs from another operating system, or licencing things which cause compatibility problems from their makers. By contrast, Apple have repeatedly sued those who have created systems allowing interoperability with iPods and iTMS.
I'm afraid not.
Judge: Where in the contract does it say you cannot licence your DRM technology to competing music stores?
Apple: Nowhere, but you see we need to make mon...
Judge: Did it not occur to you that other music stores might have exactly the same restrictions placed upon them as regards providing content with DRM?
Apple: But..
Judge: So your position is that you, Apple, are being victimised by the music industry but no other online store is, so you alone need to be able to put DRM on the device?
Apple: Oh. I suppose it is.
Judge: Open your DRM tech so other companies can sell DRMed music for the device, or stop trading in our country. This is a ridiculous double-standard.