You (and a lot of Slashdotters) should consider taking a Property Law class if you ever get a chance. The first thing they teach you is that property ownership is like a bundle of sticks, each stick representing an aspect of ownership. For example, it's possible for me to own the title rights to property, but not the possessory rights.
What this means is that you can own something, but *not* get to do whatever you want with it. It also means you can trade sticks around in exchange for other things. This is a *good* thing.
In this case, AT&T and Apple say they will sell you a phone that you can own, but you have to agree to do certain things with some of you sticks. This doesn't mean you don't own it.
And exactly what ethical duty to us would they be upholding by offering an unsubsidized, contract-free iPhone?
I'm curious to hear your answer because, while the grandparent was right about the ethical duty of fulfilling a contract you agree to, I don't think Apple owes an ethical duty to us that would require them to offer an unlocked phone.
Fragile is one thing the iPhone is not. In fact, it survived falling from a moving car at freeway speeds only to be run over by a semi. Other than a lot of cosmetic damage, it still works in every way.
What were you planning on doing with an iPhone?
And as for bulk, well unless you take your cell phones the way Zoolander does, the iPhone does pretty well in that regard too. From what I can tell, the only smart phone that is thinner is the Moto Q, and that is only *0.1 mm* thinner.
But you must be right that the only reason people buy an iPhone is to show it off to other people. Thanks for pointing out our vanity.
And let me be the first to say, "What a load of crap."
First of all, you clearly missed the outcome of the research if you consider violent video games harmless, because it indicates that to some level such games are not harmless in that they inhibit a person's ability to filter aggression in real world circumstances.
Secondly, you are making a huge and flawed assumption that natural tendencies toward violence require violent expression to be properly resolved. Extending that logic, a person with a genetic predisposition to alcoholism would be best served by drinking! The reality about violent emotion is that it can be very effectively managed through conflict resolution skills and establishing habits of kindness to other people. Instead of floodwaters needing to be slowly relieved, think of infections that should be fought off. For those with uncontrollable violent tendencies, they often suffer from chemical imbalances or bad habits, not poor release mechanisms.
My personal experience is that describing violent behavior as a necessary human condition is usually just an excuse for someone's preference for violence as a form of entertainment. You are entitled to like violence as entertainment, but don't try to excuse it by saying that everyone needs to express violence to be healthy. Violence needs to be resolved, not expressed.
And just having a trademark on the Internet doesn't mean that you are the only one who gets to us that name on the Internet. Different products in different industries can use the same name as a trademark. Ritz crackers and the Ritz hotels both get to have webpages with the word Ritz in them. One other thing, unless your website is actually about a simple dog, it's probably not a descriptive mark.
If the scenario you described would be the result, then why hasn't this happened already? After all, under your scenario, Cable Co. would be able to charge me more in exchange for less. Shouldn't they be doing this now?
The reason I don't think this will happen is because cable channels sell advertising. If they provided fewer channels for the same price, they would lose viewers and thus lose advertising reach. Channels like G4 and Animal Planet are surely subsidized, but they also sell ad space. Their cost will go up accordingly, but deservedly. For those channels that can't survive anyway, why should we subsidize them?
Can I sue the grocery store for refusing to sell me one egg?
If the all the grocery stores and egg farmers were colluding to limit your choice to 12 eggs at a time, you most certainly could sue them. This is an anti-trust lawsuit.
Interference:
A) If the iPhone battery dies it is not because Apple intentionally acted in a way for it to die. Also, you don't need the iPhone to operate in order to pay your bill to AT&T.
B) Such a contract would have to be pre-extant to buying the phone, Apple would have to know about it, and they would have to intentionally act so as to interfere with it. None of that seems to be the case here.
C) Third-party companies *already* offer battery replacements, and even if they didn't but wanted to offer replacements, you would have to have a preexisting contract that Apple knew about and intentionally interfered with.
Tort:
A) Others have pointed out that this is not really an industry standard, just a common industry practice.
B) Anti-competition laws are different than contract laws, but even in the case of anti-competition claims, third-parties can replace your battery.
C) Again, third-party companies can replace it also.
Discovery *is* an important part of the legal process, but it is one of the main reasons companies are forced to settle frivolous claims. Plaintiffs will make burdensome discovery requests to encourage the defendant to settle. If the underlying claim is known by the plaintiff to be baseless, which I suspect it is here, it doesn't justify carrying out discovery. A previous SC justice, Potter Stewart, once said that ethics is "knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is the right thing to do."
I appreciate that you are trying to explain the alternative viewpoint on this, and hopefully nobody decides to attack you personally for it. I think the reason it rankles people is because they see this lawsuit as just leveraging the legal system to extort money for something that isn't actually wrongdoing. It's pretty despicable behavior, and although explaining the underlying viewpoint doesn't mean you are trying to justify the behavior, other people might see it that way.
To answer your question, tortious interference requires the tortfeasor to intentionally interfere with something the plaintiff has a right to, such as a contract or a prospective economic advantage. There is nothing interfered with in this case that the plaintiff had a right to, nor did Apple intentionally interfere with a right the plaintiff had. You are right that industry practice *can* fill in the blanks of a contract where the parties didn't discuss the terms, but it has to be a pretty well established industry practice. I think it would be really tough to convince a court that industry practice in this case obviated the need for the plaintiff to ask some basic questions. Where there are so many technical differences between cell phone models, it is reasonable to expect the consumer to educate himself. After all, it doesn't cost much of anything to ask a salesperson some basic questions. (All of this is especially true when you consider how nonuniform battery technology is for cell phones.)
Most judges will see this for what it is. Were iPhone purchasers duped into buying a phone whose battery is very different from what they could reasonably expect? I don't think so. Caveat emptor, or "buyer beware", I think will prevail in this case.
"I think the responsibility of proving (to a judge, at least) that this isn't merely another means of vendor lock-in is rests with Apple. They departed from the standard. The 'why' of the matter is crucial."
This, actually, is immaterial to the suit. Why Apple sealed the battery inside shouldn't affect the judgment. The issue is whether or not the sealed battery violates some sort of contractual or warranty obligation that Apple has when it sells iPhones. The only way the Plaintiff(s) can get away with a claim like this is to prove that they didn't know about the battery issue before they bought the phone, *and* that it was reasonable for them to understand differently. As a contract claim, they also have to show that the actual battery replacement program is not sufficient based on their previous claims.
The biggest problem for the Plaintiff(s)--Trujillo and any others that join the class--is that courts generally place a heavy burden on buyers to educate themselves about a good or service before they purchase. I think that it's pretty plain that the information about the battery was widely available. Heck, all he had to do was ask the salesperson.
Speaking as an attorney, my suspicion is that either a greedy plaintiff or greedy attorney decided to get in the door first on what they saw to be a potentially huge issue. (Getting in the claim first is very important for class action attorneys because once a class action is settled, future claims on the same issue are barred. Being the name plaintiff in a class action is also important because you usually get more than the rest of the class.) I also think that Apple would be crazy to settle this. There will be multiple opportunities for Apple to ask the court to dismiss the suit or rule in their favor in summary judgment, meaning the cost of defending it wouldn't be too egregious. If they settle this, it sends a strong message that they are willing to roll over in the face of weak claims. All kinds of crazy claims would pop up. The plaintiff(s)'s attorneys have to spend time and money pursuing this with the risk that they will get nothing. They won't stay in too long as they come to realize that it's a plainly frivolous claim.
I really hate it when I see people using the legal system to extort money rather than to get what they actually have a right to under the law.
It's fine to add the service contract to the price of the phone. After all, that will be the true cost. However, just make sure you add the service price to all of the iPhone competitors as well, just to give an accurate comparison.
If I understand how the new AACS implementation will work, consumers with devices using it will need to install the new key every time it is released, if they want new movies to play. The stupidity of this is that people who want to copy a movie probably have no problem finding the new crack. No matter how often a new key comes out, within a day they can crack and copy.
The only people inconvenienced by this system are the people who just want to watch the friggin' movie they just bought! I shudder to think of how my mom would deal with the situation if she just bought a new blu-ray movie and found it wouldn't play because she doesn't have the latest key. I hope they give up on releasing new keys soon.
C'mon, what is informative about such a blatant ad hominem attack? Promoting this kind of behavior doesn't promote a rational argument in favor of evolution.
Part of your comment reflects my experience with switchers. Many of them want to keep doing things the hard way. Installing an application by drag and drop just doesn't feel right when you have spent your computing life running installer programs. (Ditto for uninstalling, "I can just drag it to the trash!?!?! Are you crazy? What about the registry?")
Network settings, burning files to CD, and the list goes on. Between that and learning new keyboard shortcuts, most people have to learn new habits--usually a simpler way of doing things--but then they are hooked. The same appears to be true of the guy who wrote this article.
Seriously, come on. The ad where the PC buys the Mac that C++ reference manual that he secretly lusts after himself is just so much blatant false image building it's ridiculous. Are they implying that Mac programmers live in a glorious world where technical manuals are unnecessary? Or that every windows user is a technical programmer? It's ludicrous.
The point, of course, is that it takes being the kind of person that wants a C++ GUI programming guide to actually enjoy and really understand Windows.
The "home movie" comparisons where the shapely woman is the mac one and the ugly unshaven guy in drag is from the PC is just dumb.
Easy to say, but I defy you to make a movie in MovieMaker that looks anything close to as good as one made in iMovie. Have you even used iMovie?
The PC going in for surgery is another joke. At least he PC CAN be upgraded instead of simply requiring replacement for a major OS update.
Any Mac made in the last five years can upgrade to Tiger without more than a memory upgrade and actually run many things faster. I speak from personal experience on this and the iMac I had was actually six years old. The point was that you don't *need* a hardware upgrade to upgrade the OS.
When you call someone a liar you need to provide evidence to that effect.
You are right that it was granted by apparent incompetence, but it probably *won't* stand up in court. Courts invalidate decisions by the USPTO all the time, usually on the grounds that they had no business granting or denying whatever was granted or denied.
(1) If the trademark is up for grabs, and Cisco has an iPhone product on the market which pre-dates the Apple cellular product, don't they still have "dibs" on the name? Can't they re-file for the trademark, and presumably be first in line because of an actual shipping product?
You are confusing this a bit with Patent and/or Copyright. A registered trademark gives you the assumption that the mark is properly yours and trumps all other marks. Without a registered trademark, you have to *prove* to a court that the mark is an indicator of your company being the source rather than another company. This is referred to as a common-law trademark. Cisco would have a very difficult time proving to a court that when people hear iPhone, they are more likely to think of Cisco. First-in-time might be part of a court's consideration, but the facts that Apple has a family of iBrands, that people were talking about Apple's iPhone long before Cisco released theirs (the December 06 one, that is), and that by lapsing the registered mark Cisco showed they weren't using the name would all weigh heavily in Apple's favor.
That you admit that there are plenty of scientists who want to be celebrities or rockstars shows that the parent was not making a strawman argument.
Besides, when it comes to setting policy , science is often wrong or right for the wrong reasons, just like clergy. A scientist who is wrong, but thinks he/she is right might adamantly argue for a poor policy and still be considered a "good" scientist under your criteria. Just because someone doesn't seek notoriety doesn't mean they won't strenuously argue for a flawed outcome.
New rule: If your kids are old enough to know what a dyke is, and can put up an online profile of a straight woman convincing enough to say that she is one, then by golly they're not kids anymore!
I disagree primarily because most 12-year-olds know all of this. They are also shown to have brains that have not completely developed, especially relative to judgment and planning. As long as their brains aren't done yet, parents should still be keeping a close watch. If I remember right, brain development caused by normal growth ends around age 20.
I don't think satire would protect this activity. I don't know the circumstances, but I am pretty sure the teenagers didn't do anything to indicate that the source was anything but the asst principal. That being the case, you can make a strong argument that someone would easily interpret it as authentic, and not humor. This would be easily proven if she is truly being attacked by others who saw the webpage, as she claimed.
I will be surprised if this even actually goes to trial. It sounds like what the kids did was such blatant defamation and identity theft that they really have no valid defense. The parents' liability also seems likely.
The iTunes movies are DVD quality. The trailer Jobs showed *was* HD streaming, apparently, from their trailers website. I doubt many normal broadband connections will get the same speed as Jobs' demo setup, however.
So, you bought a CD this year and now you don't need to buy another one until this one stops working?
You can sell more CDs to the developed world by coming out with better music. CD sales don't track the number of people buying CDS, but the number of CDs sold. There is nothing stopping CD player owners from buying more CDs. So, at a time when people are buying fewer CDs on the margin, they are buying more digital tracks, in spite of whatever in the industry is pushing down CD sales.
Slashdot Mirror
You (and a lot of Slashdotters) should consider taking a Property Law class if you ever get a chance. The first thing they teach you is that property ownership is like a bundle of sticks, each stick representing an aspect of ownership. For example, it's possible for me to own the title rights to property, but not the possessory rights.
What this means is that you can own something, but *not* get to do whatever you want with it. It also means you can trade sticks around in exchange for other things. This is a *good* thing.
In this case, AT&T and Apple say they will sell you a phone that you can own, but you have to agree to do certain things with some of you sticks. This doesn't mean you don't own it.
And exactly what ethical duty to us would they be upholding by offering an unsubsidized, contract-free iPhone?
I'm curious to hear your answer because, while the grandparent was right about the ethical duty of fulfilling a contract you agree to, I don't think Apple owes an ethical duty to us that would require them to offer an unlocked phone.
Fragile is one thing the iPhone is not. In fact, it survived falling from a moving car at freeway speeds only to be run over by a semi. Other than a lot of cosmetic damage, it still works in every way.
What were you planning on doing with an iPhone?
And as for bulk, well unless you take your cell phones the way Zoolander does, the iPhone does pretty well in that regard too. From what I can tell, the only smart phone that is thinner is the Moto Q, and that is only *0.1 mm* thinner.
But you must be right that the only reason people buy an iPhone is to show it off to other people. Thanks for pointing out our vanity.
And let me be the first to say, "What a load of crap."
First of all, you clearly missed the outcome of the research if you consider violent video games harmless, because it indicates that to some level such games are not harmless in that they inhibit a person's ability to filter aggression in real world circumstances.
Secondly, you are making a huge and flawed assumption that natural tendencies toward violence require violent expression to be properly resolved. Extending that logic, a person with a genetic predisposition to alcoholism would be best served by drinking! The reality about violent emotion is that it can be very effectively managed through conflict resolution skills and establishing habits of kindness to other people. Instead of floodwaters needing to be slowly relieved, think of infections that should be fought off. For those with uncontrollable violent tendencies, they often suffer from chemical imbalances or bad habits, not poor release mechanisms.
My personal experience is that describing violent behavior as a necessary human condition is usually just an excuse for someone's preference for violence as a form of entertainment. You are entitled to like violence as entertainment, but don't try to excuse it by saying that everyone needs to express violence to be healthy. Violence needs to be resolved, not expressed.
And just having a trademark on the Internet doesn't mean that you are the only one who gets to us that name on the Internet. Different products in different industries can use the same name as a trademark. Ritz crackers and the Ritz hotels both get to have webpages with the word Ritz in them. One other thing, unless your website is actually about a simple dog, it's probably not a descriptive mark.
If the scenario you described would be the result, then why hasn't this happened already? After all, under your scenario, Cable Co. would be able to charge me more in exchange for less. Shouldn't they be doing this now?
The reason I don't think this will happen is because cable channels sell advertising. If they provided fewer channels for the same price, they would lose viewers and thus lose advertising reach. Channels like G4 and Animal Planet are surely subsidized, but they also sell ad space. Their cost will go up accordingly, but deservedly. For those channels that can't survive anyway, why should we subsidize them?
Can I sue the grocery store for refusing to sell me one egg?
If the all the grocery stores and egg farmers were colluding to limit your choice to 12 eggs at a time, you most certainly could sue them. This is an anti-trust lawsuit.
Just to make the counter-arguments:
Interference:
A) If the iPhone battery dies it is not because Apple intentionally acted in a way for it to die. Also, you don't need the iPhone to operate in order to pay your bill to AT&T.
B) Such a contract would have to be pre-extant to buying the phone, Apple would have to know about it, and they would have to intentionally act so as to interfere with it. None of that seems to be the case here.
C) Third-party companies *already* offer battery replacements, and even if they didn't but wanted to offer replacements, you would have to have a preexisting contract that Apple knew about and intentionally interfered with.
Tort:
A) Others have pointed out that this is not really an industry standard, just a common industry practice.
B) Anti-competition laws are different than contract laws, but even in the case of anti-competition claims, third-parties can replace your battery.
C) Again, third-party companies can replace it also.
Discovery *is* an important part of the legal process, but it is one of the main reasons companies are forced to settle frivolous claims. Plaintiffs will make burdensome discovery requests to encourage the defendant to settle. If the underlying claim is known by the plaintiff to be baseless, which I suspect it is here, it doesn't justify carrying out discovery. A previous SC justice, Potter Stewart, once said that ethics is "knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is the right thing to do."
I appreciate that you are trying to explain the alternative viewpoint on this, and hopefully nobody decides to attack you personally for it. I think the reason it rankles people is because they see this lawsuit as just leveraging the legal system to extort money for something that isn't actually wrongdoing. It's pretty despicable behavior, and although explaining the underlying viewpoint doesn't mean you are trying to justify the behavior, other people might see it that way.
To answer your question, tortious interference requires the tortfeasor to intentionally interfere with something the plaintiff has a right to, such as a contract or a prospective economic advantage. There is nothing interfered with in this case that the plaintiff had a right to, nor did Apple intentionally interfere with a right the plaintiff had. You are right that industry practice *can* fill in the blanks of a contract where the parties didn't discuss the terms, but it has to be a pretty well established industry practice. I think it would be really tough to convince a court that industry practice in this case obviated the need for the plaintiff to ask some basic questions. Where there are so many technical differences between cell phone models, it is reasonable to expect the consumer to educate himself. After all, it doesn't cost much of anything to ask a salesperson some basic questions. (All of this is especially true when you consider how nonuniform battery technology is for cell phones.)
Most judges will see this for what it is. Were iPhone purchasers duped into buying a phone whose battery is very different from what they could reasonably expect? I don't think so. Caveat emptor, or "buyer beware", I think will prevail in this case.
"I think the responsibility of proving (to a judge, at least) that this isn't merely another means of vendor lock-in is rests with Apple. They departed from the standard. The 'why' of the matter is crucial."
This, actually, is immaterial to the suit. Why Apple sealed the battery inside shouldn't affect the judgment. The issue is whether or not the sealed battery violates some sort of contractual or warranty obligation that Apple has when it sells iPhones. The only way the Plaintiff(s) can get away with a claim like this is to prove that they didn't know about the battery issue before they bought the phone, *and* that it was reasonable for them to understand differently. As a contract claim, they also have to show that the actual battery replacement program is not sufficient based on their previous claims.
The biggest problem for the Plaintiff(s)--Trujillo and any others that join the class--is that courts generally place a heavy burden on buyers to educate themselves about a good or service before they purchase. I think that it's pretty plain that the information about the battery was widely available. Heck, all he had to do was ask the salesperson.
Speaking as an attorney, my suspicion is that either a greedy plaintiff or greedy attorney decided to get in the door first on what they saw to be a potentially huge issue. (Getting in the claim first is very important for class action attorneys because once a class action is settled, future claims on the same issue are barred. Being the name plaintiff in a class action is also important because you usually get more than the rest of the class.) I also think that Apple would be crazy to settle this. There will be multiple opportunities for Apple to ask the court to dismiss the suit or rule in their favor in summary judgment, meaning the cost of defending it wouldn't be too egregious. If they settle this, it sends a strong message that they are willing to roll over in the face of weak claims. All kinds of crazy claims would pop up. The plaintiff(s)'s attorneys have to spend time and money pursuing this with the risk that they will get nothing. They won't stay in too long as they come to realize that it's a plainly frivolous claim.
I really hate it when I see people using the legal system to extort money rather than to get what they actually have a right to under the law.
Ron and Hermione were carrying brooms. I just assumed they flew out the same way that Fawkes did.
It's fine to add the service contract to the price of the phone. After all, that will be the true cost. However, just make sure you add the service price to all of the iPhone competitors as well, just to give an accurate comparison.
If I understand how the new AACS implementation will work, consumers with devices using it will need to install the new key every time it is released, if they want new movies to play. The stupidity of this is that people who want to copy a movie probably have no problem finding the new crack. No matter how often a new key comes out, within a day they can crack and copy.
The only people inconvenienced by this system are the people who just want to watch the friggin' movie they just bought! I shudder to think of how my mom would deal with the situation if she just bought a new blu-ray movie and found it wouldn't play because she doesn't have the latest key. I hope they give up on releasing new keys soon.
C'mon, what is informative about such a blatant ad hominem attack? Promoting this kind of behavior doesn't promote a rational argument in favor of evolution.
Walt Mossberg apparently said it runs a slim version of OS X.
Why is parent flamebait?
Part of your comment reflects my experience with switchers. Many of them want to keep doing things the hard way. Installing an application by drag and drop just doesn't feel right when you have spent your computing life running installer programs. (Ditto for uninstalling, "I can just drag it to the trash!?!?! Are you crazy? What about the registry?")
Network settings, burning files to CD, and the list goes on. Between that and learning new keyboard shortcuts, most people have to learn new habits--usually a simpler way of doing things--but then they are hooked. The same appears to be true of the guy who wrote this article.
Seriously, come on. The ad where the PC buys the Mac that C++ reference manual that he secretly lusts after himself is just so much blatant false image building it's ridiculous. Are they implying that Mac programmers live in a glorious world where technical manuals are unnecessary? Or that every windows user is a technical programmer? It's ludicrous.
The point, of course, is that it takes being the kind of person that wants a C++ GUI programming guide to actually enjoy and really understand Windows.
The "home movie" comparisons where the shapely woman is the mac one and the ugly unshaven guy in drag is from the PC is just dumb.
Easy to say, but I defy you to make a movie in MovieMaker that looks anything close to as good as one made in iMovie. Have you even used iMovie?
The PC going in for surgery is another joke. At least he PC CAN be upgraded instead of simply requiring replacement for a major OS update.
Any Mac made in the last five years can upgrade to Tiger without more than a memory upgrade and actually run many things faster. I speak from personal experience on this and the iMac I had was actually six years old. The point was that you don't *need* a hardware upgrade to upgrade the OS.
When you call someone a liar you need to provide evidence to that effect.
You are right that it was granted by apparent incompetence, but it probably *won't* stand up in court. Courts invalidate decisions by the USPTO all the time, usually on the grounds that they had no business granting or denying whatever was granted or denied.
(1) If the trademark is up for grabs, and Cisco has an iPhone product on the market which pre-dates the Apple cellular product, don't they still have "dibs" on the name? Can't they re-file for the trademark, and presumably be first in line because of an actual shipping product?
You are confusing this a bit with Patent and/or Copyright. A registered trademark gives you the assumption that the mark is properly yours and trumps all other marks. Without a registered trademark, you have to *prove* to a court that the mark is an indicator of your company being the source rather than another company. This is referred to as a common-law trademark. Cisco would have a very difficult time proving to a court that when people hear iPhone, they are more likely to think of Cisco. First-in-time might be part of a court's consideration, but the facts that Apple has a family of iBrands, that people were talking about Apple's iPhone long before Cisco released theirs (the December 06 one, that is), and that by lapsing the registered mark Cisco showed they weren't using the name would all weigh heavily in Apple's favor.
That you admit that there are plenty of scientists who want to be celebrities or rockstars shows that the parent was not making a strawman argument.
Besides, when it comes to setting policy , science is often wrong or right for the wrong reasons, just like clergy. A scientist who is wrong, but thinks he/she is right might adamantly argue for a poor policy and still be considered a "good" scientist under your criteria. Just because someone doesn't seek notoriety doesn't mean they won't strenuously argue for a flawed outcome.
New rule: If your kids are old enough to know what a dyke is, and can put up an online profile of a straight woman convincing enough to say that she is one, then by golly they're not kids anymore! I disagree primarily because most 12-year-olds know all of this. They are also shown to have brains that have not completely developed, especially relative to judgment and planning. As long as their brains aren't done yet, parents should still be keeping a close watch. If I remember right, brain development caused by normal growth ends around age 20.
I don't think satire would protect this activity. I don't know the circumstances, but I am pretty sure the teenagers didn't do anything to indicate that the source was anything but the asst principal. That being the case, you can make a strong argument that someone would easily interpret it as authentic, and not humor. This would be easily proven if she is truly being attacked by others who saw the webpage, as she claimed.
I will be surprised if this even actually goes to trial. It sounds like what the kids did was such blatant defamation and identity theft that they really have no valid defense. The parents' liability also seems likely.
The iTunes movies are DVD quality. The trailer Jobs showed *was* HD streaming, apparently, from their trailers website. I doubt many normal broadband connections will get the same speed as Jobs' demo setup, however.
So, you bought a CD this year and now you don't need to buy another one until this one stops working?
You can sell more CDs to the developed world by coming out with better music. CD sales don't track the number of people buying CDS, but the number of CDs sold. There is nothing stopping CD player owners from buying more CDs. So, at a time when people are buying fewer CDs on the margin, they are buying more digital tracks, in spite of whatever in the industry is pushing down CD sales.