Hilary Rosen Gripes About iPod, iTMS 764
mijkal writes "Hilary Rosen, the former RIAA CEO and chairwoman, has spoken out against Apple's "lock-in" with iPod and the iTunes Music Store." From the article: "The problem is that the iPod only works with either songs that you buy from the on-line Apple iTunes store or songs that you rip from your own CD's." Ironically, she appeals to consumer rights and anti-monopoly tactics."
Who is kidding whom, Hilary? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think Hilary Rosen might have encountered the concept of telling the truth at a party once, but didn't get beyond the cursory introduction.
I went ahead and RTFA to make sure the above statement wasn't being taken out of context by the post. It wasn't, and it might actually kind of be true if one is absolutely insistent on playing only AAC files on the iPod. The actual truth, which Hilary Rosen would likely not be willing to acknowledge without the threat of slow torture death behind it, is that the iPod works with sample MP3s that you might legally download from a band's website or any one of a gazillion legal indie music MP3 sites, and also works with audiobooks downloaded from Audible.com. But Rosen probably considers any music by an unsigned band to be beneath putting on an iPod anyway, and probably isn't too interested in audiobooks, either.
Other ridiculous ideas in the blog entry include: "He [Steve Jobs] is as laconically casually cool as Bono" and the idea that the iPod constitutes a monopoly. First off, Steve Jobs might be a little bit hip, but he's not cool except to the Mac faithful, the only ones who really care who he is (that's my opinion, though. I might be wrong). Second, a monopoly means that no-one can buy or use a product or service type by anyone other than a specific company. Ma Bell had a monopoly on phone service. There wasn't an alternative. There are zillions of alternatives to the iPod. The iPod is just really, really popular. That doesn't make it a monopoly.
The oddest thing to me is that no-one who would actually seek out and read Hilary Rosen's blog would be the least bit fooled by the misstatements in it.
well that's odd (Score:2, Interesting)
Should I file a bug?
The reason (Score:2, Interesting)
iTunes (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Childish (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm absolutely sure that the RIAA would love people paying for 5 copies of the same song, but at least Rosen is coming to realize that people just won't do that. If a person downloads Kazaa in order to get an unlocked version of a song that they own and in turn finds 50 songs that they don't own, then it's flagged as a loss.
Every spokesperson acts and rallies in their own company's best interest. It's a fact of business, and a fact of life.
A simple solution (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Girlfriend (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess she wasn't aware of the fact that there is an option in the iTunes menu which says "Convert selection to mp3," instantly making your AAC files into cross-platform mp3s. And she probably didn't realize her statement that "even if the cheapest one costs a few hundred dollars" is invalidated by going to the Apple website and seeing that the base iPod shuffle costs $99.
Re:Huffington Post shows up on /. their first day (Score:3, Interesting)
Ms. Huffington went to great lengths to insist that she's commissioned a multitude [latimes.com] of Democratic party aligned writers to contribute articles to her site.. There are 14 authors on the front page today, and we've got: Tips from Cronkite on how to fix the Democratic party, Sen Corzine blasting Bush on not supporing one of his bills, Huffington making fun of Tom Delay, Rep Markly criticizing the Bush administration over N.K. nukes, another critiquing Bush's foreign policy, a critique of the wildlife commission, a critique of the Republican religious base...
Not bad! Way to change minds and win friends!
Re:yeah... (Score:3, Interesting)
I stopped subscribing to them.
Re:Umm...looks like she uses an iPod (Score:2, Interesting)
"Hilary Rosen would prefer it if the world's youth didn't think she was hopelessly uncool. She has an iPod."
Interesting to note the article where she has an iPod is from February 2003, but her recent article (from TODAY) says she just got an iPod!!!!:
"The new iPod my girlfriend gave me is a trap."
Hillary, you have been dismissed as a non-credible witness. and a moron.
Re:Girlfriend (Score:1, Interesting)
This is simple. (Score:2, Interesting)
The Solution (Score:2, Interesting)
Sure beats taking them to court.
Clarification please (Score:4, Interesting)
To clarify, if you have an iPod (which plays mp3, wav, aac, and Apple's DRM aac version Fairplay.), you cannot download music from other websites like Wal-mart which uses the proprietary DRMed Windows format wma. So you want Apple to adopt somebody else's DRM?
Remember this simple fact: The standard default file format for 99% of all portable media players is mp3 not wma not Fairplay. Apple supports that default format. They will not support somebody else's format that is not the standard.
Theory (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems rather likely considering that everything she said while she was in charge was evil and everything she has said since her resignation is singificantly more sane.
Re:Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/dev
I felt so much more educated after reading that! I wish my iPod had fun extras and I wish a professional would make my playlist for me because I miss adverts before, after and during my music!
Re:A simple solution (Score:5, Interesting)
She said the iPod only accepts iTunes tracks and songs she ripped from her CDs, but not from OTHER stores.
That's what she's complaining about!
She doesn't care that people rip music from their own CDs!
Re:Want to know what's REALLY funny? (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem is, it also shows them that a lot of people WILL put up with their crazy DRM schemes in order to get they music they love.
This is why I will not use the itunes music store, and with the levy on blank media in my country (Canada), I feel free to download as much music as I can for free... hell I've already been convicted and paid the fine anyways.
I do however want an ipod.. because of the levy, I feel justified in downloading, which means generic mp3s, and I can use the ipod for my tunes. Once again doing the "wrong thing" is the better way. (serial keys, dongles, online authentication, CSS, DRM, etc... all make it harder for the person WHO WILL PAY for their software/music/movies to use it the way they like.)
Guilty until proven innocent? What planet has this?
WTF? (Score:2, Interesting)
Apple DRM vs Microsoft DRM. (Score:3, Interesting)
Does anyone really think she is interested in using all these other music services. Or is she just acting as a paid mouth piece?
I wonder who is paying for her opinions these days.
Re:Damn Microsoft (Score:3, Interesting)
About ten or twenty years ago it was looking like we were headed that way. Common formats, common APIs for convertors (EVERY modern OS can run almost all straight UNIX command line tools, without more than a thin wrapper to change the names of the calls... that was sure as hell not true 20 years ago), the whole world was on track to tear down every last barrier between communication, at least for computers. And then it ground to a screeching halt, all in the name of "intellectual property". Proprietary undocumented file formats, digital rights management, even laws against reverse engineering. And it's nuts. It can't possibly work. It's science fiction.
Back about 10 years ago I had a real long talk with a fella who was real hot for DRM, so he could publish his e-books without worrying about people ripping them off. I didn't see the point, I figured the only way you could get a DRM mechanism that would keep people from copying his eBooks was to have the whole bookreader sealed in epoxy, with some kind of mechanism to tell when there was a scanner pointed at it so it could keep people from reading the pixels and reconstructing the book that way.
Now, things like the Baen Free Library were way in the future, so I didn't have the argument that DRM-free content actually improved sales, but I really couldn't imagine a tough enough DRM to keep the book from being stripped and passed around... so it at the very least wouldn't hurt them. The people who wanted a "free" copy could get one anyway.
And that's more or less what's been happening.
So DRM doesn't work. But in the meantime, well, we'll just have to put up with barriers put up by the music industry, the computer industry, and well-intentioned but poorly-advised lawmakers. If some of these folks don't like the barriers others are putting up, there's a REAL easy solution that would let 'em tear them ALL down...
Is she serious? (Score:2, Interesting)
why do I need a subject line for hitting preview? (Score:3, Interesting)
She doesn't explain whether or not the problem goes both ways. I.e. non-Apple players (save the HP iPod clone) can't play DRMed AAC, just like Apple players can't play DRMed WMA. How much of the current situation is the result of companies' can'ts and how much of it is the result of companies' won'ts? Also, which format -- AAC vs WMA -- is more open?
Another reason Apple shouldn't do WMA (Score:3, Interesting)
You also have to consider the fact that WMA is harder to break because it runs only on Windows and Microsoft has embedded Windows Media Player's DRM component (as of version 9) deeply in the kernel where it's much much harder to patch than iTunes, which is just an application.
This isn't really a problem, because it doesn't really matter whether DRM is breakable or not, because building a DRM that's really unbreakable is a fantasy. DRM can never be more than a token effort on any system that isn't embedded in epoxy from the data to the cortex, with a self-destruct charge wired into the data that'll go off if it thinks you're trying to break into it. Anything less can at the very least be intercepted between the metal and the meat.
And with the internet, once one person, anywhere in the world, has beaten the DRM... it's beaten everywhere. All DRM can do is slow things down. So stopping piracy isn't the real point to DRM. Now the people who push DRM may honestly believe it is, but it's not... it can't stop piracy. But... it DOES have an effect.
What DRM does is increase the control the people peddling the DRM have over the people using the end product. And control can ALWAYS be parleyed into money. DRM doesn't actually have to work to make this control possible, people just have to go along with the DRM. So, it just has to be strong enough that people go along with it, without being restrictive enough that people are forced to try and break it anyway. And iTunes seems to be doing a pretty good job of that, actually.
Anyway, the big problem for a lot of us who oppose DRM is not that it makes music cost a little more or be a little less convenient, it's that DRM depends on keeping a part of the system you sell to a user secret from the user you sell it to. To build a really strong DRM mechanism you really do need a tightly controlled proprietary system... an "open source" DRM is a contradiction in terms. In fact, even having a DRM plugin or component in an open-source application is impossible. Hell, even having openly documented hooks for the DRM module would render it irrelevant. Any place you let the user control what his own hardware and software are doing you provide a place to strip out the DRM. And putting that control in the hands of the user... not the vendor... is what Open Source and Open Systems are really all about.
Now, a little bit of openness isn't really a problem for the DRM advocates. After all, they started out by complaining about the impact of 'piracy' on a system that had no DRM at all. But over the years they have convinced themselves that it is.
And Microsoft's DRM is "better" than Apple's.
And that's why I don't want Apple using WMA, anywhere. I don't want the DRM pressure groups to push Apple to reduce their commitment to Open Source and Open Systems.