Norway Outlaws iTunes 930
haddieman notes that while many people are getting more and more annoyed at DRM, Norway actually did something about it. The PC World article explains: "Good intentions, questionable execution. European legislators have been giving DRM considerable attention for a while, but Norway has actually gone so far as to declare that Apple's iTunes store is illegal under Norwegian law.
The crux of the issue is that the Fairplay DRM that is at the heart of the iTunes/iPod universe doesn't work with anything else, meaning that if you want access to the cast iTunes library, you have to buy an iPod."
Re:Good! (Score:3, Informative)
So what? It's still DRM, so it's still just as restrictive!
Re:And... (Score:5, Informative)
Also, when you are in a dominant position as an online music store, you kind of have advantages over all of the competition, so what they're doing is more related to what Microsoft did with Internet Explorer.
Last but not least, you must remember that newly formed laws on computer software cannot be compared to the laws of items.
Fix the title - ITMS != iTunes (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Oh, F'ing please (Score:3, Informative)
I also think that if you burn and rip to get it in as mp3, you lose the ID3 tags, but I don't feel like verifying that right now.
QT Fair Use and another program I don't recall converted everything to mp3s quite nicely though, as I just switched from an ancient iPod to a Creative Vision
Re:Oh, F'ing please (Score:5, Informative)
Obviously I must be a moron then, because when I tried that this message popped up:
Re:Dumbass (Score:3, Informative)
And then there other quasi-legal methods of finding music or ripping my own CD's that I bought online. Maybe you were thinking of the Zune, which locks up even your legal tracks under DRM?
10 minutes, nay, 30 seconds on Apple's iPod page would have told you this.
Re:Good! (Score:4, Informative)
Apple wont even allow THAT.
Re:And... (Score:3, Informative)
The Constitution does not guarantee copyrights. Nor does it require Congress to enact copyright laws. All it does is empower Congress to enact copyright laws, or not, as it chooses. That's why it says that they have a power, not that they shall do something.
Before the current government was established, the states had control over copyright, along with interstate commerce, extradition, and a number of other things. And they made a hash of it. The numerous screw-ups on the part of the states and the very weak confederate government gave rise to the wholesale recreation of the US government that gave us the federal constitution. While the framers wanted a stronger central government, they didn't want it to be too strong, so they limited it so that it could only have certain enumerated powers. Since the states had shown themselves to be inept at certain kinds of things, those were the powers given to the federal government. One of those things was copyright.
The framers generally didn't think that copyright was needed, but that under the right circumstances it was useful. They thought that their circumstances were such that it was useful, but of course, given different circumstances, or different amounts of copyright, that usefulness might not exist.
Re:Good! (Score:3, Informative)
It's the store Norway wants to get rid of, not the iPods themselves.
Article is utterly incorrect (Score:3, Informative)
Re:So all those EU built phones will be open? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Good! (Score:5, Informative)
Norwegian Consumer Council goes after MS too (Score:5, Informative)
Re:My Talk With Richard Stallman About This (Score:3, Informative)
All of those applications use Microsoft software (or at least APIs, but probably software) to gain Playsforsure functionality. All of them only run on a Microsoft OS.
Re:And... (Score:2, Informative)
Only when they can't buy safery razor blades and double edge razor blades and you have to go to a Gillette. There is a standard razor format still out there. The blades fit box cutters and paint scrapers, art tools, medical tools, as well as razors. You can buy the blades at either the grocery store, drug store, or hardware store. Your other option is to go the single vendor lock-in route. You don't have to pirate blades if you decide not to go with a single vendor solution.
You can't find many online music stores selling a variety of formats for several brands and functions of devices. This is the issue. I can buy several brands of razor blades at any one of the stores to fit my open format razor and can shop for the best brand and price. There is no online store selling competing brands of DRM content compatible with whatever brand of music player you happen to like. There is also no price and quality choices. If you buy online for your iPod, the only choice in the USA is 99 cents a track at the only quality level of 128Kbits. If you have a Zen, you can't buy compatible content for any price. If your device plays MP3's, you are SOL at the iTunes store. It's like having a safety razor and absolutely nobody sold blades for it so you had to rip your own from tin cans. (I know e-music, but try to buy any mainstream music there..)
Here are some examples of safety razor blades to fit your any name and function device that uses safety razor blades..
Mekur brand http://www.amazon.com/Merkur-Double-Safety-Blades
Auto Parts blades
http://www.parts4cars.com.au/cart.php?target=prod
Feather brand
http://www.classicshaving.com/catalog/item/522941
Excel brand
http://www.dickblick.com/itemgroups-r/razorblades
Wilkinson brand
http://www.blademail.co.uk/acatalog/Classic_Twin_
Gem brand
http://www.2spi.com/catalog/tools/smtol14.shtml [2spi.com]
There are more not listed here.. You can't mix music and players like you can razors. MP3 format works fine, but everyone wants to be the defacto DRM single vendor instead.
Re:Good! (Score:3, Informative)
I suppose HP might play a few tricks to make it difficult for third parties to recycle cartridges, making it impossible to sell third party cartridges without infringing the patent; in that case I believe the patent should be suspended, partly to allow interoperability, but also as a punitive measure for abusing the patent system.
Re:So all those EU built phones will be open? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:How long before vista's SUPER DRM is banded? (Score:4, Informative)
(If you widen your view beyond portable players, then iTMS isn't *that* locked in since iTMS songs do play on regular Macs and Windows computers via the iTunes app).
Norway != EU (Score:5, Informative)
In essence, as a Mac and iPod user, I don't like this, but in principle it should apply to everybody, including Microsoft's Zune, which isn't even compatible with Microsoft's own Plays For Sure brand, and that name is terribly ironic.
Still, I don't really care. If I can't listen to music because of DRM, then I'll make my own or go and watch a Bach recital or something (until Microsoft/Sony/RIAA or whatever make playing music in public illegal unless you pay them for it)
Re:Good! (Score:3, Informative)
So, it isn't Apple who are to blame for DRM being used in Norway, or anywhere else (even though, as I said before, they do profit from it).
Re:Zune and Sony Atrak and WMA? (Score:5, Informative)
AAC has nothing to do with FairPlay, Apple, or anything else, for that matter. AAC is a completely open format that was meant to replace the MP3 (and should, but old habits die hard), Apple didn't want to use Vorbis because it requires a lot more battery power to encode... and people already bitch about battery life. FairPlay could theoretically be inserted into any number of file formats, it's just that Apple only uses AACs for music transfer.
So, again, neither of the As in AAC stands for Apple, it's an MP4 compression container file, that Apple bought in to... and most of the other companies are too busy with WMA and MP3 that they haven't bought into it yet. It's like saying that HD-DVD is a Microsoft format... no, it's a Toshiba format, in which Microsoft now uses.
Re:Good! (Score:5, Informative)
The iPod is not banned here in Norway, it is available like any other player on the market. iTunes is also prefectly legal. However, the consumer-alliance has after negotiations with Apple, required that "the locks" will be open by the end of september. Apple have untill the first of march to come with their answer. If they refuse, Norway are "prepared to remove iTunes from the market".
-kosmonaut
Re:Good! (Score:2, Informative)
Also you tend to find that US labels will not have rights to sell anything in Europe (independant labels not withstanding); it will be the local labels that have those rights. So for example EMI US probably won't have the rights to sell music in the UK, that is handled by EMI UK. (can you tell I've been through this mess before? *grin*) You can argue that it's usually the labels that are insisting on DRM, but I've also dealt with some artists that also wanted it.
Re:Good! (Score:3, Informative)
In the 1980s, the plethora of incompatible home computers, each unable to run software written for any of the others, was questioned. The consensus was that you should no more expect a cassette clearly labelled for the Commodore 64 to be usable with a Spectrum, than you should expect an 8-track cartridge to be playable on a turntable or a super 8 movie on a VHS recorder. In the end, The Market decided; a whole bunch of machines failed for want of software availability, and it was the Speccy, 64, Amstrad CPC and Beeb that won out, with a few Orics and Dragons hanging on around the fringes.
Now, in some countries, "format shifting" is explicitly legal. In other words, if you own an album on CD or LP, you are allowed to make a copy of it on cassette or MP3. (In the UK, it's not actually legal, merely unprosecutable. Any court case relating to format-shifting would set a precedent, and neither outcome would be desirable.) Under such a doctrine, you probably would have a right to rewrite an Xbox game to run on another platform -- at your own expense, and for nobody's use but yours. (In the case of 8-bit home computers, such rewriting wouldn't have been altogether technically unfeasible for a programmer knowledgeable in both the source and target architectures. Anyone remember magazines with type-in listings, with the "conversion clues" sidebars? *sigh* They were great days.) That's not strictly true. At the moment, music distributors have exclusive deals to represent performers. You can buy Kellogg's corn flakes, or you can buy corn flakes from other manufacturers. You can even flatten and toast your own maize kernels. But you can't buy Pink Floyd on any label except EMI. You can't buy Sheryl Crow on any label except A&M. You can't buy Shakira on any label except Sony. (I'd change all that: performers would mortgage the copyright in their songs to finance recording and distribution; the distributor would have lien over all copies of the first pressing, the size of which would be calculated to pay off the loan. Once the first pressing was all sold out and the initial loan paid off, the rights in the song revert to the performer, who then becomes free to pay the same company or any other company to distribute their music, and distributors would compete in the marketplace both for performers [effectively suppliers] and customers. If the rights in the song expire before the initial pressing is sold out, well, the distributor is up the same well-known waterway as anyone else who buys a large warehouse full of perishable goods and fails to punt them out in good time.)
That's the essential difference: if you are concerned to listen to a particular song or a particular performer, then music is not a competitive market in the same way as other "commodities".
anyone read this articel (Score:3, Informative)
its a must read for everyone! it explains everything
Re:Good! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:No, it certainly wasn't (Score:3, Informative)
The justification for not licensing FairPlay is simple: Apple wants to make money. They don't make money on Itunes. They make it on the hardware. Ergo, if people can play the music on any old thing they may not buy the Ipod, and ergo Apple doesn't make money. You can call it greed if you want, but most people call it "business". And when it's between consenting adults and both parties uphold their contractual agreements, it's both legal and moral.
So the short of it is this is just another socialist EU(-ish) government who doesn't like that their businesses aren't getting a piece of the pie. No argument you make can possibly change this fact because your position is indefensible. Your point is like arguing that the $10 cell phone someone buys that's locked to a particular provider should be unlocked so you can use whatever provider you want. You got that cell phone because it's subsidized. Itunes is subsidized by the Ipod hardware. Apple should just make that explicit and tell anyone who bitches about it to toss off.