Slashdot Mirror
EU Commissioner Slams Music Lock-In
Nonu writes "EU Commissioner for Consumer Protection Meglena Kuneva has come out against DRM lock-ins like Apple's iPod-iTunes combo. Kuneva said she believes the tie-in that keeps music bought from the iTunes Store from playing on MP3 players other than the iPod was unreasonable. '"Do you find it reasonable that a CD will play in all CD players, but an iTunes song will only play on an iPod?" asked Kuneva. "It doesn't [seem reasonable] to me. Something must change."' The EU is in the midst of an effort to harmonize its consumer protection laws, and along with the question of DRM tie-ins it is also looking at mandating cooling-off periods during which customers could 'return' downloaded music."
The solution isn't standardized DRM. It's no DRM. The music industry (and apparently government regulators) want you to believe the only practical solution is the former. The real solution is the latter, for all the reasons Jobs outlined, not the least of which is that DRM will NEVER stop piracy and ALWAYS be able to be defeated.
Probably not. But it almost appears that way. More likely politics on the issue that iTunes being an Apple product, and Apple not being an EU based company, while several other EU based companies *cough* Philips *cough* LG *cough* are not making any headway into the market which is completely dominated by Apple. While I personally love the outcome of the fight, i.e. someone fighting for removing of DRM. The reasons for the fight are suspect in my eyes.
Why just fight against DRM for iTunes, and not DRM for everything? If the EU commisioner was really fighting for consumer rights here, it should be all DRM'ed anything, music, movies, electronic books, etc., etc., should be able to be universally used on any device. Which essentially means that it needs to be universal. Problem here is that as such, DRM can not work.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
The government is stepping in to keep the consumer from harm and/or to ensure the market is functioning properly by attempting to regulate some degree of interoperability. The government has done this many times to very positive effect. In many cases such interoperability leads to much greater choice and much lower cost. If the government failed to do that choice would exist but it would be expensive and difficult to obtain because alternatives would have a significant market disadvantage. So, in summary, the whole point here is to give you choice, not to butt into your business.
]{
Has it ever occured to you that the statements made by Jobs about DRM were *precisely* made because of what the EU's doing. It's the old proven method to deal with "you shouldn't be doing X" by responding "I don't like it either, but Y is forcing me to do it". In this case, both the music companies and Apple want DRM, for very different reasons. The music industry wants you to buy your music 10 times, while Apple wants to make sure it won't work on anything other than an iPod.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
How different is FairPlay from, say, Macrovision?
With Macrovision, when I sell or give you my DVD, it will play in your player. It will play in anybody's player in the same region.
What happens when you mail me your iTunes track?
The truth shall set you free!
Because this is the *same* government that grants the right of the music factory to charge for their product every time they make a copy for about one and a half century even if the actual cost of making that particular copy is practically zero and *anyone* can make that copy if they want. This is the same government which in some countries artificially raises the price of data medium and give a cut to the music factories because the medium is capable of holding music.
In this case they do not do Big Brother things, they do not limit what you can do - it is actually DRM that limits what you can do and the various IP laws (by the government, actually). All they want now is that the music manufacturers can't squeeze you more than what the law grants to them.
This isn't about preventing people from buying music from Apple's store. It's about Apple preventing competitors from developing better players for that music. Does Apple own a patent on music? Why should Apple be able to dictate how its customers use that music after they've purchased it? It's a classic example of a company using their dominance of one market to control another. Think about how you'd feel if Microsoft decided that the only browsers you're allowed to use in Windows are browsers developed by Microsoft. In this case, Apple decided that the only music players you're allowed to use for iTunes music are those developed by Apple.
if a label feels that it needs to sell something in Fooistan for US3 that sells for US$18 in the United States, because that's what the market bears and that's how they've chosen to price it - which is their right - without some of the controls of DRM, how can the $3 version be restricted to Fooistan?
Your conclusions are all right -- that such a scheme is impossible -- but I disagree with your premises, namely that doing such is a "right."
You have the "right" to try and sell your wares at whatever price you wish, but others have a right to not buy it, and buy it from somebody else if they prefer.
In general, you are a fool, if you try and sell a good in one place, at a price that's higher than what you sell it at in another place, plus the cost of transporting it from the latter place to the former. So, for example, if you sell records in Fooistan for $3, and it costs $1 to send a record from Fooistan to Baristan, then you will probably never be able to get much more than $4 for records in Baristan, because if you attempt to charge more, consumers will just end-run you, and have stuff shipped in from Fooistan, where it's cheaper. This is their right, and the sellers' right, under many historically-established doctrines, such as First Sale. (Which sadly no longer seems to exist in Great Britain, but that's a story for another day.)
The fact that people in Baristan might pay a whole lot more than $4 for your record, if they existed in a complete vacuum (i.e. where the cost of transportation from Fooistan was infinite), is totally irrelevant. You have no 'right' to that price, because it's provably not what the real-world market will bear when it's connected to other markets. It might as well be ignored, because it doesn't matter.
What computers do to information (among many other things) is make the cost of transporting it from one place to another, very, very low. So it ought to be basically impossible to sell a digital commodity in one place for a different price than you sell it in another, because people will just ship the files (at negligible cost) around your carefully-designed price-discriminatory barriers. In effect, cheaper communication and transportation (with information, these are the same thing) link the markets into one market, where there is but a single prevailing price for any fungible good. This is pretty basic economics here.
The sellers of some types of information, particularly entertainment, have attempted to defy this by erecting technical hurdles which prevent information from being easily transmitted from one place to another. In effect, they're making it harder to transport goods, thus allowing a greater difference in price to be created in different regions. With DVDs, this is done with region coding and locking. With iTunes songs, it's done with a flat prohibition on resale, enforced by per-user licensing. But like all DRM, these are inherently flawed and thus surmountable; the fact that they can be worked around means that you can only charge so much more for content in various areas, before it becomes worth the trouble to buy it from some other area and bypass the blocks.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."