Re:But people won't pay for the fully-DRM-enabled
on
PressPlay + Roxio?
·
· Score: 1
I don't think, in today's post-antitrust verdict world, that Microsoft can afford to be so blatant. They can't simply "make it so that iTunes won't run." They would be forced to be far more subtle than that, I can assure you. Not that they aren't unscrupulous enough to do it - they are. Just that they do have to pay lip serivce to playing nice and that means no in-your-face antitrust violations like you're describing.
Re:Perhaps the success of the Apple Music Store ..
on
PressPlay + Roxio?
·
· Score: 1
I'm still at a loss to explain why they didn't get that Windows version ready to go from day one though.
Simple. The record companies wanted to test this boat in a small pond before letting it out in the open ocean. It was they who decided that they would be willing to do a Mac-only service before comitting to a larger audience. Hopefully it's success means that Windows versions will be forthcoming from a number of players, Apple included.
Re:Perhaps the success of the Apple Music Store ..
on
PressPlay + Roxio?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I think everyone who has seen the iTunes Music Store immediately began wondering who would lead the pack in bringing this model to the unwashed masses of Windows users...Apple? Someone else? Multiple companies simultaneously? Would there be a clear leader with marketplace domination?
These questions are still unanswered, but at least we know Roxio is among those entering the race with Apple.
You know, at first I thought this was a good idea. People go to google to find out "objective info," not what I and some guy down the block think about it, right?
But then I started thinking maybe that's wrong. I mean what is it that makes millions of us sit up at night on the web rather than watching late-night tv? I believe that it is because there is some kinds of information that you can get on the web that you can't get on television, newspapers, magazines, or radio.
That information is simply real people speaking plainly in their own voices. Complete with lies, swear words, misunderstandings, misspellings, everything. it's completely devoid of slick, corporate, boardroom approved, focus-group tested, marketing speak. People like that, it seems. They like it enough to shut off Letterman and hang here.
If you wanted to buy a car for example you could go to the dealer showroom and listen to the sales person and read the glossy brochure. Or, you could go to an independent web discussion site to hear what owners have to say about it. Even if some of the things they say aren't true you're a lot more likely to get the straight scoop after reading a hundred posts there than you are by reading all the promotional materials the maker can throw at you.
So, given that this type of information is what makes the web a cool place to begin with, in the end maybe the real smart thing for google to do would be the opposite: the default behavior is to include blogs. You'd have to deliberately exclude them if you wanted to. An opt-out scenario.
And please excuse me for butchering the ideas of David Weinberger in his magnificent Small Pieces Loosely Joined.
I heard "about 200,000 in the first 18 hours" or something like that. Then "1 million in the first week." Now "2 million in the first 14 days." I suspect all three are pretty right on.
You may be right in that it's not "news." But you're wrong in your assertion that someone needs a smoking memo otherwise it's all just kind of "a matter of opinion." That's bunk. The state of affairs is so obvious to any industry observer with a clue that it's not even worth debating.
But, again, that doesn't make it "news." Nor does it make Microsoft evil. Nor does it mean their products aren't worth owning.
I'm sure Bill & Co. would love to be able to present themselves as free-wheeling hipsters when it suited them (and Apple would love to be able to present themselves as the no-nonsense, utilitarian Corporate Approved Vendor.) But no, there are still meaningful differences between the two companies philosophical approaches.
The idea that Steve copies Bill as much as Bill copies Steve is ludicrous on it's face. Microsoft copies Apple tons more, always has. Listen, I'm not saying that makes them evil. They're not breaking the law here. Let them copy away! It's good for everyone. I'm merely pointing out that they're not the "innovation powerhouse" that they make themselves out to be. Calling a spade a spade.
And Apple has been the most consistently anti-DRM company you can name besides the P2P companies themselves. Their current nod to DRM in the iTunes Music Store is an amazing achievement in that they somehow convinced the RIAA that we all might actually buy the music if it wasn't DRM'd to death (see PressPlay, for example). Apple has been as pro-consumer as a company can get in the whole digital music thing. Tossing them in the same bin as Microsoft isn't accurate or fair.
...their's nothing wrong with them using DRM if they choose.
Yes there is. It's just not illegal. As far as I know. But it's wrong. Ultimately they would like to make it so that we can never ever play music/watch movies on any hardware device without their explicit A-OK. Approved hardware list, online verification of licensure, the whole bit. That is exactly what they would like and they will attempt to get it. (They already tried once with computer makers: "hey, why don't you put a little chip in your box so that nobody can play anything we don't want them to?" The computer makers replied: "Uh, that doesn't sound like good business for us. No thanks.") And that, whether legal or not, represents a wholesale change in the way consumers "consume" media. It would usher in a whole new era of rigidly controlled, freedomless access to the stuff you pay for. And, I maintain, it is wrong of them to do.
I'm no attorney, but I'd say "fair use" means being able to put a store-bought music CD into my Mac and have it play. I'd say it includes being able to rip said CD and put the resulting music on whatever other playback device I own. So far attempts by the RIAA at stopping piracy haven't been sucessful in any way..but they have infringed my fair use as described above. That, I maintain, is the real problem with the RIAA right now.
No shit. Let's not forget that our major problem with the RIAA is the fact that they are enacting laws and introducing DRM technologies that destroy our fair use as consumers. Our problem with them is not that they are trying to prevent us from stealing music.
Granted, they need to be in compliance with the law as they take swipes at pirates...but c'mon, they're still pirates.
I'd personally like to backhand the geniuses behind at spymac for doing this. Jesus, don't they see that this is the first good thing that's happened to the music industry in ages? This - the humble iTunes Music Store - is the wedge in the door of getting the RIAA to actually do business with us online in a way that doesn't....suck! This is what we've been asking for!
We should be building on this model, making it better rather than undermining it. What they are doing is going to give the RIAA the jitters and make them think twice about letting Apple and others expand the model. What spymac is doing is irrefuckingsponsible.
You're missing the point. Even with directX on Linux no game developer has a financial interest in making a Linux version. Because they're already selling the Windows version to the same people...because they're all dual booting. There's no financial gain to them when they're just selling a Linux version and it's displacing a Windows version sale. Mac uesrs are different. You don't make a Mac version, you lose sales.
I do agree, however, that DirectX is evil. But I don't want to see DirectX on Linux or Mac. If it happened, we'd see a few new games maybe. Not many (see above). Eventually OpenGL would fade away. You'd start noticing that the DX quality on Linux was shitty. MS doesn't update it timely enough. It's not feature complete. Then one day 'we're not doing directX 12 for Linux. Our customers don't want it..."
THEN where are you? A platform with no games and no API to develop them on.
Our engergy is better spent promoting OpenGL rather wishing for DirectX to come our way.
OpenGL or not, no game developer has much of an incentive to port a game to Linux. Why? Because every Linux user who gives a hoot about gaming dual boots Windows. Think about it. You're a game developer. You can either:
a) not develop for Linux, pocket the savings, sell a million games.
b) incur the expense of developing/testing/supporting for Linux and sell...zero additional units.
At least doing a Mac port involves getting sales that you flatly would not otherwise have gotten. Mac users are not dual booting Windows for the purposes of playing games. You don't make a mac version, you don't sell to the Mac user. Simple.
Well that "move" happened a couple of years ago and has nothing to do with the current story then. I guess I just misunderstood because of that disconnect.
Well either someone could send it to you or you could try one of the other terminal apps out there. this one looked interesting.
Oh, and dragging something from the Apps folder to the Dock (it's not called "taskbar") results in an shortcut or "alias" of the thing. The original item doesn't get moved when one draggs to the Dock. You must've dragged it somewhere else or otherwise deleted it entirely.
You seem to think this story represents some kind of "move" that it does not. I'm guessing you're not all that familiar with OS X. Fro example, there is no "hiding" of the command line. There's an application called "Terminal" that, when launched, gives you a standard tcsh command line. It no more "hidden" than their "add a printer" utility.
I recommend you try OS X sometime. You might like it. At the very least you'll understand a little more than it's a bona fide Unix operating system and hasn't been "dumbed down" as you seem to imply.
Re:Apple's (& RIAA's) long-term plan
on
The Law and P2P
·
· Score: 1
You quite clearly have no idea what you're talking about. Let a guy watch "Triumph of the Nerds" on PBS and suddenly he's all-knowledgeable on the history of the personal computer industry. Not.
Re:Apple's (& RIAA's) long-term plan
on
The Law and P2P
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Actually what's going to happen is that Napster is going to reform, retool and re-appear on the scene letting users download any and all music for $0.10 per song with no DRM restrictions using lossless open source audio compression techniques. The RIAA will take them to court, be defeated, and all of it's members will be jailed for being jerks to music lovers.
Naturally I have no evidence to back up these wild claims.
Which is exactly the same amount of evidence you have for claiming that Apple and the RIAA are going to pull a PressPlay on its customers.
Here's a concept: Maybe they're the first people to do this thing correctly. Maybe in a year's time everyone will be doing it this way. Maybe all non-Mac users will look back on the fact that Apple led the way with this model and laugh nervously and rapidly change the subject. Kind of like they do with most of the other innovative firsts to come out of Cupertino.
It's not the quality of the service that I'm knocking. I'm merely pointing out that under no circumstances will we ever see the RIAA/record company biggies release their entire libraries using a model such as this. For anyone who doubts this, consider that nothing has prevented them from doing it thusfar and it hasn't happened. I maintain it never will. Apple's "DRM lite" model is the only way they're going to go along.
Put your name behind your words next time. And stop insulting people. It doesn't make you sound any smarter.
And FYI, eMusic still sucks. They have 250,000 songs and almost all of them have never been heard of by 99% of the music listening public. Cluephone ringing for you: The RIAA will never, ever EVER agree to release all of its content using that kind of model. So if you're waiting for that kind of model to come to pass you'd better get real chummy with Kazaa because you'll be using it forever.
Your "rental of music" comparison is severely flawed
I don't think so. Some services actually operate in just this way. It's an all-you-can-eat deal, but if you stop paying, your "library" of music is no longer yours to listen to. No pay, no listen.
You are right about one thing, though. There are actual examples of per-song downloading without onerous DRM. But these invariably independent and unknown artists for which there is little demand. None of the big lables or the RIAA has ever agreed to such things before.
How much of this success is due to this being a truly significant advance in implementations versus Apple simply having a heavy presence in the market?
Put simply, it's both. Apple has great brand recognition, marketing muscle and a loyal customer base. But none of that should take away from the fact that this is a significant advance in implimentation.
How? Well, basically the only games in town for legit online music downloading involved one or more of the following onerous "gotchas."
1. Rental of music. That is, you don't pay your monthly subscription, you can't listen to "your" music anymore. At $20 per month, this starts to get pretty stupid. No mystery why this never took off.
2. Over-zealous DRM after downloading. Once the file is on your computer you can't burn a CD. Or you can, but only certain tracks. Or only if you pay an additional fee. Only one CD, please. Etc., etc., etc. Transferring the file to another machine? Hassle. Quibbles about Apple's "Fairplay" DRM technologies notwithstanding, they're lightyears ahead of what came before.
Apple hasn't gotten it 100% right, but they clearly are hitting the 95% mark and one expects the model to be refined further still. Other services have been consistently below the 50% if you ask me. Not that it was their fault! The RIAA basically either owned these downloading services or at the very least severely restricted the terms of the music licenses. That is to say, the RIAA killed those other services before they were born.
One of the greatest achievements of the iTMS isn't the fact that clever Apple engineers came up with a great idea first - hell, everyone knew the basics of what was needed for online music downloading business to be sucessful. But the RIAA wouldn't allow such a model! No, cleverness aside, the great achievement is the fact that the Big Steve managed to convince the record companies that his model was a good idea for them. Obviously they had rejected such liberal, consumer-friendly models countless times before. I'm recalling a quote from the top guy at Sony that said (paraphrasing here!) "I think it was about fifteen seconds after Steve started talking that I decided to license our entire library to him."
"Reality Distortion Field"? Maybe. However he did it, he managed to get the RIAA to swallow a viable music downloading business model. Viable because it contains enough rights for customers for them to put down their hard earned cash and enough controls for content providers to put up their wares.
Relax. It was a donation. A strategic move on the part of a company to get some good PR out of some overstocked product. The company then parlays that good PR into increased sales down the road. Then they start making more money. Then they start hiring more people....
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think, in today's post-antitrust verdict world, that Microsoft can afford to be so blatant. They can't simply "make it so that iTunes won't run." They would be forced to be far more subtle than that, I can assure you. Not that they aren't unscrupulous enough to do it - they are. Just that they do have to pay lip serivce to playing nice and that means no in-your-face antitrust violations like you're describing.
I'm still at a loss to explain why they didn't get that Windows version ready to go from day one though.
Simple. The record companies wanted to test this boat in a small pond before letting it out in the open ocean. It was they who decided that they would be willing to do a Mac-only service before comitting to a larger audience. Hopefully it's success means that Windows versions will be forthcoming from a number of players, Apple included.
I think everyone who has seen the iTunes Music Store immediately began wondering who would lead the pack in bringing this model to the unwashed masses of Windows users...Apple? Someone else? Multiple companies simultaneously? Would there be a clear leader with marketplace domination?
These questions are still unanswered, but at least we know Roxio is among those entering the race with Apple.
You know, at first I thought this was a good idea. People go to google to find out "objective info," not what I and some guy down the block think about it, right?
But then I started thinking maybe that's wrong. I mean what is it that makes millions of us sit up at night on the web rather than watching late-night tv? I believe that it is because there is some kinds of information that you can get on the web that you can't get on television, newspapers, magazines, or radio.
That information is simply real people speaking plainly in their own voices. Complete with lies, swear words, misunderstandings, misspellings, everything. it's completely devoid of slick, corporate, boardroom approved, focus-group tested, marketing speak. People like that, it seems. They like it enough to shut off Letterman and hang here.
If you wanted to buy a car for example you could go to the dealer showroom and listen to the sales person and read the glossy brochure. Or, you could go to an independent web discussion site to hear what owners have to say about it. Even if some of the things they say aren't true you're a lot more likely to get the straight scoop after reading a hundred posts there than you are by reading all the promotional materials the maker can throw at you.
So, given that this type of information is what makes the web a cool place to begin with, in the end maybe the real smart thing for google to do would be the opposite: the default behavior is to include blogs. You'd have to deliberately exclude them if you wanted to. An opt-out scenario.
And please excuse me for butchering the ideas of David Weinberger in his magnificent Small Pieces Loosely Joined .
The readers here are not reporters. They're nerds. They should know better and I will call them out on in when they fail to demostrate it.
:)
But the reporter..yeah he can go free.
Bring me a pizza and I'll submit one for ya. Pepperoni and black olive please.
I heard "about 200,000 in the first 18 hours" or something like that. Then "1 million in the first week." Now "2 million in the first 14 days." I suspect all three are pretty right on.
You may be right in that it's not "news." But you're wrong in your assertion that someone needs a smoking memo otherwise it's all just kind of "a matter of opinion." That's bunk. The state of affairs is so obvious to any industry observer with a clue that it's not even worth debating.
But, again, that doesn't make it "news." Nor does it make Microsoft evil. Nor does it mean their products aren't worth owning.
I'm sure Bill & Co. would love to be able to present themselves as free-wheeling hipsters when it suited them (and Apple would love to be able to present themselves as the no-nonsense, utilitarian Corporate Approved Vendor.) But no, there are still meaningful differences between the two companies philosophical approaches.
The idea that Steve copies Bill as much as Bill copies Steve is ludicrous on it's face. Microsoft copies Apple tons more, always has. Listen, I'm not saying that makes them evil. They're not breaking the law here. Let them copy away! It's good for everyone. I'm merely pointing out that they're not the "innovation powerhouse" that they make themselves out to be. Calling a spade a spade.
And Apple has been the most consistently anti-DRM company you can name besides the P2P companies themselves. Their current nod to DRM in the iTunes Music Store is an amazing achievement in that they somehow convinced the RIAA that we all might actually buy the music if it wasn't DRM'd to death (see PressPlay, for example). Apple has been as pro-consumer as a company can get in the whole digital music thing. Tossing them in the same bin as Microsoft isn't accurate or fair.
...their's nothing wrong with them using DRM if they choose.
Yes there is. It's just not illegal. As far as I know. But it's wrong. Ultimately they would like to make it so that we can never ever play music/watch movies on any hardware device without their explicit A-OK. Approved hardware list, online verification of licensure, the whole bit. That is exactly what they would like and they will attempt to get it. (They already tried once with computer makers: "hey, why don't you put a little chip in your box so that nobody can play anything we don't want them to?" The computer makers replied: "Uh, that doesn't sound like good business for us. No thanks.") And that, whether legal or not, represents a wholesale change in the way consumers "consume" media. It would usher in a whole new era of rigidly controlled, freedomless access to the stuff you pay for. And, I maintain, it is wrong of them to do.
I'm no attorney, but I'd say "fair use" means being able to put a store-bought music CD into my Mac and have it play. I'd say it includes being able to rip said CD and put the resulting music on whatever other playback device I own. So far attempts by the RIAA at stopping piracy haven't been sucessful in any way..but they have infringed my fair use as described above. That, I maintain, is the real problem with the RIAA right now.
No shit. Let's not forget that our major problem with the RIAA is the fact that they are enacting laws and introducing DRM technologies that destroy our fair use as consumers. Our problem with them is not that they are trying to prevent us from stealing music.
Granted, they need to be in compliance with the law as they take swipes at pirates...but c'mon, they're still pirates.
I'd personally like to backhand the geniuses behind at spymac for doing this. Jesus, don't they see that this is the first good thing that's happened to the music industry in ages? This - the humble iTunes Music Store - is the wedge in the door of getting the RIAA to actually do business with us online in a way that doesn't ....suck! This is what we've been asking for!
We should be building on this model, making it better rather than undermining it. What they are doing is going to give the RIAA the jitters and make them think twice about letting Apple and others expand the model. What spymac is doing is irrefuckingsponsible.
You're missing the point. Even with directX on Linux no game developer has a financial interest in making a Linux version. Because they're already selling the Windows version to the same people...because they're all dual booting. There's no financial gain to them when they're just selling a Linux version and it's displacing a Windows version sale. Mac uesrs are different. You don't make a Mac version, you lose sales.
I do agree, however, that DirectX is evil. But I don't want to see DirectX on Linux or Mac. If it happened, we'd see a few new games maybe. Not many (see above). Eventually OpenGL would fade away. You'd start noticing that the DX quality on Linux was shitty. MS doesn't update it timely enough. It's not feature complete. Then one day 'we're not doing directX 12 for Linux. Our customers don't want it..."
THEN where are you? A platform with no games and no API to develop them on.
Our engergy is better spent promoting OpenGL rather wishing for DirectX to come our way.
OpenGL or not, no game developer has much of an incentive to port a game to Linux. Why? Because every Linux user who gives a hoot about gaming dual boots Windows. Think about it. You're a game developer. You can either:
a) not develop for Linux, pocket the savings, sell a million games.
b) incur the expense of developing/testing/supporting for Linux and sell...zero additional units.
At least doing a Mac port involves getting sales that you flatly would not otherwise have gotten. Mac users are not dual booting Windows for the purposes of playing games. You don't make a mac version, you don't sell to the Mac user. Simple.
Well that "move" happened a couple of years ago and has nothing to do with the current story then. I guess I just misunderstood because of that disconnect.
Well either someone could send it to you or you could try one of the other terminal apps out there. this one looked interesting.
Oh, and dragging something from the Apps folder to the Dock (it's not called "taskbar") results in an shortcut or "alias" of the thing. The original item doesn't get moved when one draggs to the Dock. You must've dragged it somewhere else or otherwise deleted it entirely.
You seem to think this story represents some kind of "move" that it does not. I'm guessing you're not all that familiar with OS X. Fro example, there is no "hiding" of the command line. There's an application called "Terminal" that, when launched, gives you a standard tcsh command line. It no more "hidden" than their "add a printer" utility.
I recommend you try OS X sometime. You might like it. At the very least you'll understand a little more than it's a bona fide Unix operating system and hasn't been "dumbed down" as you seem to imply.
You quite clearly have no idea what you're talking about. Let a guy watch "Triumph of the Nerds" on PBS and suddenly he's all-knowledgeable on the history of the personal computer industry. Not.
Actually what's going to happen is that Napster is going to reform, retool and re-appear on the scene letting users download any and all music for $0.10 per song with no DRM restrictions using lossless open source audio compression techniques. The RIAA will take them to court, be defeated, and all of it's members will be jailed for being jerks to music lovers.
Naturally I have no evidence to back up these wild claims.
Which is exactly the same amount of evidence you have for claiming that Apple and the RIAA are going to pull a PressPlay on its customers.
Here's a concept: Maybe they're the first people to do this thing correctly. Maybe in a year's time everyone will be doing it this way. Maybe all non-Mac users will look back on the fact that Apple led the way with this model and laugh nervously and rapidly change the subject. Kind of like they do with most of the other innovative firsts to come out of Cupertino.
It's not the quality of the service that I'm knocking. I'm merely pointing out that under no circumstances will we ever see the RIAA/record company biggies release their entire libraries using a model such as this. For anyone who doubts this, consider that nothing has prevented them from doing it thusfar and it hasn't happened. I maintain it never will. Apple's "DRM lite" model is the only way they're going to go along.
Put your name behind your words next time. And stop insulting people. It doesn't make you sound any smarter.
And FYI, eMusic still sucks. They have 250,000 songs and almost all of them have never been heard of by 99% of the music listening public. Cluephone ringing for you: The RIAA will never, ever EVER agree to release all of its content using that kind of model. So if you're waiting for that kind of model to come to pass you'd better get real chummy with Kazaa because you'll be using it forever.
Your "rental of music" comparison is severely flawed
I don't think so. Some services actually operate in just this way. It's an all-you-can-eat deal, but if you stop paying, your "library" of music is no longer yours to listen to. No pay, no listen.
You are right about one thing, though. There are actual examples of per-song downloading without onerous DRM. But these invariably independent and unknown artists for which there is little demand. None of the big lables or the RIAA has ever agreed to such things before.
How much of this success is due to this being a truly significant advance in implementations versus Apple simply having a heavy presence in the market?
Put simply, it's both. Apple has great brand recognition, marketing muscle and a loyal customer base. But none of that should take away from the fact that this is a significant advance in implimentation.
How? Well, basically the only games in town for legit online music downloading involved one or more of the following onerous "gotchas."
1. Rental of music. That is, you don't pay your monthly subscription, you can't listen to "your" music anymore. At $20 per month, this starts to get pretty stupid. No mystery why this never took off.
2. Over-zealous DRM after downloading. Once the file is on your computer you can't burn a CD. Or you can, but only certain tracks. Or only if you pay an additional fee. Only one CD, please. Etc., etc., etc. Transferring the file to another machine? Hassle. Quibbles about Apple's "Fairplay" DRM technologies notwithstanding, they're lightyears ahead of what came before.
Apple hasn't gotten it 100% right, but they clearly are hitting the 95% mark and one expects the model to be refined further still. Other services have been consistently below the 50% if you ask me. Not that it was their fault! The RIAA basically either owned these downloading services or at the very least severely restricted the terms of the music licenses. That is to say, the RIAA killed those other services before they were born.
One of the greatest achievements of the iTMS isn't the fact that clever Apple engineers came up with a great idea first - hell, everyone knew the basics of what was needed for online music downloading business to be sucessful. But the RIAA wouldn't allow such a model! No, cleverness aside, the great achievement is the fact that the Big Steve managed to convince the record companies that his model was a good idea for them. Obviously they had rejected such liberal, consumer-friendly models countless times before. I'm recalling a quote from the top guy at Sony that said (paraphrasing here!) "I think it was about fifteen seconds after Steve started talking that I decided to license our entire library to him."
"Reality Distortion Field"? Maybe. However he did it, he managed to get the RIAA to swallow a viable music downloading business model. Viable because it contains enough rights for customers for them to put down their hard earned cash and enough controls for content providers to put up their wares.
Relax. It was a donation. A strategic move on the part of a company to get some good PR out of some overstocked product. The company then parlays that good PR into increased sales down the road. Then they start making more money. Then they start hiring more people....
...you get a job.
*bang*