Thursday, February 8, 2007

Good Job, Jobs


So I haven't bothered to keep up with the latest and greatest in iPods. I keep accidentally slicing through the headphone cord when I'm jogging along at a good clip.


But man can't help but hear the news. The Nordic nasties from Norway are threatening legal action against Apple because they deem the iStore to be an unfair business practice.


So Jobs responded in a shockingly personal way, and makes some good points. Why are they picking on the iStore? Microsoft had an 'open model' DRM system like the consumer vikings are asking for, but they gave up on it and switched to a hardware specific store for the Zune. If anyone over there is suing them, I'm not hearing about it.


Of course Apple would be down with not using DRM. The iPod's bread and butter is file sharing: ripping your CD library, copying the vinyl collection your uncle finally bothered to digitize, and forcing your friends to listen to your Sepultura albums from highschool. The iStore is like frosting on the workhorse. It's a middle man that brings you the Kanye West album at 4 in the morning when you're drunk and you think you need it, and if the record labels would comply, they'd let you do it no-strings-attached.


So now the legal lords of Lillehammer are saying that the iStore is unfairly locking a consumer into using an iPod, and that Jobs is copping out by blaming the record industry. My knife and I strongly disagree. Firstly, they have it backwards. If anything, buying an iPod would lock you into the iStore, not the other way around. My knife is also pretty sure they are getting iTunes and the iTunes music store confused.


But regardless, I'm sure they'll work it out. The record companies seem like reasonable people.

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