F OR CASUAL USERS, ITUNES DRM will never stop selling songs for use with i Tunes.
doesn’t look so bad, and for many of them, Apple controls the iPod, and uses that control to
it’s a pretty loose set of chains. A lot of info- lock Rhapsody and Napster songs out of the most
civilians don’t own more than five CPUs (the limit popular portable player on the market. The music
on the number of boxes an i Tune can play on), and industry can’t afford to blow them off.
i Tunes is new enough that not many of us have had The entertainment industry, having accidentally
the opportunity to sink a big investment in the tech- created cozy monopolies for the likes of Apple,
nology and try to take it with us to a new vendor. Microsoft, and Macrovision, is now busily trying to
For the recording industry, i Tunes represents a put itself back in charge of its own destiny. Next-
chance to charge more for less. An i Tune can’t be generation crippleware DVD standards, like Blu-Ray
sold on as a used good, something that we can do and DVD-HD, are being defined by studio-crafted,
with our CDs. You can’t turn an i Tune into a ring- fragile alliances of bitter competitors from the
tone, nor make other uses that the record compa- technology industry, companies that will be hard-
nies might want to charge us money for. It’s a neat pressed to present a unified front when it comes
and easy way to gouge us for the stuff we used to time to negotiate terms with Hollywood.
get gratis.
But for Apple, i Tunes is a great way to lock us Once Apple controls the
into using its products. No one is allowed to make
a compatible i Tunes player without Apple’s permis- relationship with music
sion (when RealNetworks tried to make a Real play- er that ran on the iPod, Apple threatened a lawsuit listeners, Apple can name
under the DMCA). its price and set its terms
Apple doesn’t really care how many CPUs you listen to a track on. Apple doesn’t really care how for selling music.
many people you stream a song to. That’s just a
sop to the record industry. Apple cares about you While monopolists rearrange the deck chairs on
sinking an investment into an integrated chain of their sinking superliners, we makers are busily build-
technologies (iPods, CPUs, i Tunes metadata) and ing, acquiring, and using open technologies and file
media (songs) that will raise the switching costs if formats that let us move our media freely from one
you decide to give your business to someone else. device to another, keeping us from being locked into
From the recording industry’s perspective, this is an entertainment company or a DRM vendor.
a disaster. Once Apple controls the relationship with Let the dinosaurs go for each other’s throats — we
music listeners, Apple can name its price and set its can see the tar rising around their feet.
terms for selling music. The record companies are
trying desperately to raise the cost of some tracks
and lower the cost of others because they believe Cory Doctorow ( craphound.com) is a science fiction novelist,
blogger and technology activist. He is co-editor of the popular
they’ll sell more that way, and Apple has basically weblog Boing Boing ( boingboing.net), and a contributor to laughed them off. Why? The record companies Wired, Popular Science, and The New York Times.
References:
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