This proves Apple wants monopoly control of digital music. Wake up you iLemmings before it's too late.

BTW, where's the 2.5GHz G5 old Steveo promised for July. Another case of massive RDF, how many iLemmings believed they would get their 2.5 G5 in July?

If Apple has refused to license it's FairPlay technology, what would you call the recently announced deal with Motorola?

Apple's licensing of Fairplay to Motorola is a different technology and a different situation all together. It is not the same as licensing Fairplay to competing online music services. Motorola doesn't have their own music download service.

There is no error in the story.

Brad Gibson - story author

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RealityCheck wrote:
This proves Apple wants monopoly control of digital music. Wake up you iLemmings before it's too late.

BTW, where's the 2.5GHz G5 old Steveo promised for July. Another case of massive RDF, how many iLemmings believed they would get their 2.5 G5 in July?

BTW RC don't you have a life???

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Guest wrote:
it's

</Pedantry>

...those of us with older iPods will be getting some of the 4G features after all - in a firmware update - "real" soon now...heh heh.


Jack

I gotta side with "Guest" here, Brad. Apple has clearly not "refused to license its Fairplay Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology to any other company."

If you had instead written "...to any other music download service," your statement would be correct. As it stands, it is factually incorrect.

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RealityCheck wrote:
This proves Apple wants monopoly control of digital music.

Brilliant deduction there, RC. Of course Apple wants to earn the biggest share of the market as possible. There's a word for that: capitalism.

The took their time to review the situation, technically and legally, and made their position clear. "Hacker" is a good word for Real in this case and lawyers are going to make more on this than Real.

Monopoly RC? Go to the stores and look at the competition. It was there before the iPod and now there are a lot of "I-want-to-be-an-iPod" copies for you to spend your money on. No monopoly there. Lots of music stores for downloading as everyone is trying to get into the game, from MS to Wal-Mart. No monopoly there. Could it be that everyone is mad because Apple made an iPod that no one can (legally) copy? Or a music store that customers like better than all the others combined? Consumers have a huge choice and, unlike the competition, often have to wait weeks to get their iPod. They wait weeks because the competition doesn't create the same desire. Could that be product design?

The real reality check is that Apple invested a large amount of time, money and talent to bring a beautifully designed (and wonderfully integrated) iPod/iTunes/Music Store environment to the market. They showed the world how to be successful with LEGAL downloads.

Now the "competition" is licking their wounds (with things like Dell's DJ), crying foul because they don't want to spend the money, they don't want to wait to enter the market, and they definitely don't have the design talents to develop their own package. Since they are impotent in their ability to match the elegance and excitement of Apple's efforts they can only come up with a failing effort, a poor copy, or (now) a hack. Oh, and yes, they also get those easily convinced without facts, and/or Mac bashers, to join their cause to make Apple give them everything so they won't have to invest in development efforts or try to hire talented people who can innovate. They love lap dogs like RC.

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RealityCheck wrote:
This proves Apple wants monopoly control of digital music.


Brilliant deduction there, RC. Of course Apple wants to earn the biggest share of the market as possible. There's a word for that: capitalism.


Okay, but how come when microsoft does it it's called a Monopoly?

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RealityCheck wrote:
This proves Apple wants monopoly control of digital music. Wake up you iLemmings before it's too late.

No. It proves Apple desires to protect its intellectual property and product development from second and third-tier vendors who choose not to make an investment in engineering their own award-winning products.

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Okay, but how come when microsoft does it it's called a Monopoly?

Because MS actively engages in anti-competitive measures in order to ensure its dominance.

Apple doesn't.

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RealityCheck wrote:
This proves Apple wants monopoly control of digital music. Wake up you iLemmings before it's too late.

BTW, where's the 2.5GHz G5 old Steveo promised for July. Another case of massive RDF, how many iLemmings believed they would get their 2.5 G5 in July?

When someone starts off having a large share of the market due to being first /best to market its not called a monopoly its called innovation. When a company gains share in a market from using strong arm tactics and threats, that's called a monopoly. There's a difference. You'd know that if you got out of your mom's basement long enough to buy a book or go to the library and read.

oh, and FYI, the 2.5's are shipping. Sorry.

Why don't you just face it that Apple is here to stay. No amount of wishing or forum antics will change that. Now, go back to your swingset child.

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Billy K wrote:

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Okay, but how come when microsoft does it it's called a Monopoly?

Because MS actively engages in anti-competitive measures in order to ensure its dominance.

Apple doesn't.

Actually, Microsoft was declared a monopoly by the Federal courts. The monopoly status was upheld by the US Circuit Court on appeal.

Monopolies are not always illegal. In Microsoft's case the company developed a legal monopoly. The anti-trust case concerned Microsoft's illegal use of its monopoly status in illegal ways by using its monopoly in operating systems to gain an advantage in other markets and with other products.

Again, monopolies are often times legal. Microsoft has been declared a monopoly by the courts.

Apple does not have legal monopoly status and thus can operate more freely than Microsoft.

Maybe I read Real's article wrong but does this Harmony software not just strip the downloaded music file of Real's DRM and re-encode it as an unprotected AAC file? If so, what's wrong with that?
Didn't Apple tout this feature of copying unprotected AAC files to your iPod with their iTunes 4.5 release?

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jimothy wrote:
I gotta side with "Guest" here, Brad. Apple has clearly not "refused to license its Fairplay Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology to any other company."

If you had instead written "...to any other music download service," your statement would be correct. As it stands, it is factually incorrect.

Change made to story. Are we happy now?

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rinnin wrote:
Maybe I read Real's article wrong but does this Harmony software not just strip the downloaded music file of Real's DRM and re-encode it as an unprotected AAC file? If so, what's wrong with that?

The problem is that it encodes it as a protected AAC file. This is where the problem lies, since to do so would mean that they most likely broke the FairPlay encryption. If this is the case, then they violated the DMCA and are in a heap of trouble.

On another note, if they had done what you suggested, stripping the Real DRM and saving it as a plain AAC file, I don't think the music labels would be very fond of that.

I don't understand why everyone is defending Apple like it does no wrong. (This is coming from the loving owner of 2 Macs and an iPod.)

Apple is obviously not a monopoly, but is stopping competition in a way that hurts us, the iPod consumers. (Monopolies are, btw, bad for capitalism whether they're arrived at legally or not. Competition is the only thing that makes capitalism function.)

I own an iPod, and Apple is trying to make sure that I can only buy my music through it. Why are you people defending that action? You like being stuck buying from the company store? If I had a WMA (or whatever the MS media format is), I could buy from any number of sources. So we're disadvantaged, and Apple is doing it, and you guys are just lining up for it. I don't care whether it's the most profitable thing for Apple, it hurts us.

I'd also like to see Real survive. It's one more format competing against MS. It would be great if Apple and Real could cooperate on some level so that they won't both be destroyed by MS.

Oh and one more thing. This whole intellectual property protection thing has completely gotten out of hand to the point where it's stifling innovation rather than nurturing it. And Apple is unfortunately pushing that envelope even further.

Now the funny thing is that I don't really care about this issue on a personal level. I get my music from allofmp3.com, where you can encode at a much higher quality level than at iTunes and pay pennies per song. (By pennies, I mean $.05 to $.15 per song.)

Cheers.

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bradg60 wrote:

Change made to story. Are we happy now?

Yes, thank you. Now if you could just do something about these darn corns on my feet.

You better believe SJobs is serious about "control the whole widget" Apple needs to learn how free enterprise and competition works. Maybe that will translatae into sell more Macs and gain back some Mac Market Share which we all know is much more important than iPod market share.

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Anonymous wrote:
You better believe SJobs is serious about "control the whole widget" Apple needs to learn how free enterprise and competition works. Maybe that will translatae into sell more Macs and gain back some Mac Market Share which we all know is much more important than iPod market share.

Actually, Apple's market share in its core market (PCs costing $1,000.00 or more) is rising. Apple is in interested in unit sales and profit margins, not unit sales alone.

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RealityCheck wrote:


BTW, where's the 2.5GHz G5 old Steveo promised for July. Another case of massive RDF, how many iLemmings believed they would get their 2.5 G5 in July?

On this topic, Intel announced today the delay of high speed P4 chips.

The article goes on to mention Intel's "bumpy year" in terms of meeting production schedules and product deadlines, also mentioning the recent chip recall.

Apple needs to wait on IBM as much as much as the non-Mac PC makers needs to wait on Intel. Apple isn't alone in waiting on production of faster chips.

First of all, because a court of law said so … and also because MS doesn’t mind squashing the competition (or buying them out to let their technology die of old age, for lack of continued development), because MS has *threatened PC makers into not installing competing OSs into their computers, because MS IS a monopoly, and an abusive one at that … also because MS can afford to lose money indefinitely on a product, just trying to wait for the competition to die off (see the X-box …)
Are these enough reasons to satisfy you, or should the list be added to ?

"Apple is obviously not a monopoly, but is stopping competition in a way that hurts us, the iPod consumers" "You like being stuck buying from the company store?" "I could buy from any number of sources.""Now the funny thing is that I don't really care about this issue on a personal level. I get my music from allofmp3.com, "

And Apple nor the ipod stop you from utilizing that mp3 service - so where is your point?

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Guest wrote:
"Apple is obviously not a monopoly, but is stopping competition in a way that hurts us, the iPod consumers" "You like being stuck buying from the company store?" "I could buy from any number of sources.""Now the funny thing is that I don't really care about this issue on a personal level. I get my music from allofmp3.com, "

And Apple nor the ipod stop you from utilizing that mp3 service - so where is your point?

You're quoting one part of my statement out of context in a misleading way. "I could buy from any number of sources" was the end of a sentence that started with "If I had a WMA..." (meaning if I had a WMA-based music player).

Allofmp3.com sells it's files with absolutely no restrictions for pennies. Apple couldn't quash them unless they made the iPod so that it refused to play mp3's at all. Fortunately even Apple doesn't have the nerve to do that.

I'm lucky to have found allofmp3.com, and I don't expect that opportunity to last long. They don't market at all; they're in Russia; their legal status is unclear. It doesn't look stable to me. (How exactly can a music site survive and stay profitable with no DRM at all?)

Regardless of this lucky and probably short-lived opportunity, Apple is acting to lock us into buying only from it in order to make more money. I can understand why they're doing that. What I can't understand is why you're cheering.

If the file is an mp3, ipod will play it!!! Who the heck gives a hoot about real networks garbage? If apple cornered the market on digital music, (as they are doing) This would be a good thing!!!
If you want to download music go to itunes music store, 99cents per song is very fair. if you want to steal music...you insult the artist. There is no honor among thieves.

I have never used allofmp3.com, but personally I would be a bit wary of giving a credit card number to them. First, as you said, the service may not be legal and second, a large quantity of the credit-card stealing schemes are run from Russia.

Keep an eye on your charges.

/friendly warning

Yeah, I wouldn't give my credit card # to a Russian company. But you can use PayPal for allofmp3.com.

I realize on second or third thought that the whole issue is about DRM's. Allofmp3.com currently doesn't use any, so Apple can't keep them off of the iPod anyway. Apple does try to keep any other DRM off of the iPod, and Real has just found a way around Apple's fence. Apple wants to keep that fence intact, which (as I've already ranted about extensively) is profitable for Apple (at least in the short term), but bad for iPod users, who would benefit from competition.