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iTunes user sues Apple over iPod
- Thread starter Prospero
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Can we fire stupid people out of a large cannon? Into the sun? Please?
This argument only works if he's talking about music downloaded and paid for from the iTunes music store. If he wants his other portable music players to play his own CDs that were ripped via iTunes, well, then Apple isn't responsible for him being too thick to flip the switch from AAC to MP3. It's right there in the options, plain as day.
StrikerObi
Member
xsarien said:
The stupid thing is that AAC is an open format so it's not like Apple is really forcing him to do anything. In fact, I'm pretty sure iRiver supports the format as well as the iPod.
StrikerObi
Member
Willco said:
Hmm, that's right. But we were talking about transfering songs from a CD to a computer and encoding them in AAC, and those would still work with iPod.
I just think this guy wants a piece of the pie.
I think there's more of a point being made by this case than "I am stupid, I want money", namely that Apple is assuming users of its iTunes service are criminals who intend to distribute the music they purchase for free, leaving poor musicians destitute, and treats them accordingly. Same deal as copy protected CDs (which ironically, iTunes does a very good job of ripping).
iapetus said:
Apple's implementation of FairPlay is actually pretty lenient. You can burn the music you purchase to a CD, copy it to a specific number of computers, and keep it forever on your own computer, as well as your iPod. The article implies (heavily) that the guy either thinks he can only play his own ripped music on an iPod because he used iTunes, or that he went ahead and bought music off of iTMS without stopping to think (or read) that he'd only be able to download said purchased music onto an iPod if he wants to go portable.
It really is a case of "I'm stupid, and I want money."
StrikerObi said:
Just because AAC is an open format doesn't mean Apple adheres strictly to it. AFAIK, they use a custom security "wrapper" on the AAC music file. Therefore, you need an iTunes-compatible player or burner to de-encrypt the original AAC file and play it.
Ignatz Mouse
Banned
There's also a freeware DRM-removal program out there.
The guy is just being a twat.
The guy is just being a twat.
Manabanana
Member
Willco said:
Yes there are. At least for OSX, there are. You can even remove all the restrictions in place on the AAC file, effectively turning it into an MP3. And you can burn AAC to audio CD.
There are several programs for Windows and Mac that will turn .m4p files into unprotected .m4a AACs...They're all based on Hymn.
IIRC, they require you to use one of your iTunes authorizations, and they're also possibly in violation of the DMCA. What this guy wants is the ability to legally transfer his .m4p files to non-Apple portable devices. I think it's a fair thing to ask for. As much as I like iTunes, iPod, and the iTMS, legally purchased music should legally be able to be played on any device the owner wishes.
Now, I'm not sure this is such a great thing to sue over. The real solution needs to be the industry standardizing on one format, not legal shinannigans.
IIRC, they require you to use one of your iTunes authorizations, and they're also possibly in violation of the DMCA. What this guy wants is the ability to legally transfer his .m4p files to non-Apple portable devices. I think it's a fair thing to ask for. As much as I like iTunes, iPod, and the iTMS, legally purchased music should legally be able to be played on any device the owner wishes.
Now, I'm not sure this is such a great thing to sue over. The real solution needs to be the industry standardizing on one format, not legal shinannigans.
Manabanana
Member
Willco said:
I said at least because I wasn't sure. Here.
http://www.nch.com.au/switch/index.html
Windows app that will convert from AAC to MP3.
Manabanana
Member
Anthropic said:
Sure, but you could say that about a number of things when it comes to technology. What Apple is doing with Fairplay and the ITMS isn't abnormal, but competitors are miffed because they can't cash in directly on the iPod's success. I agree though, ideally, ITMS tracks would play on any music player (and also have have higher quality alternative versions of tracks, if not uncompressed, for real audiophiles). I myself only used the ITMS for a few weeks before the sound quality got to me and I don't even have an iPod or portable music player, so for me, a lot of this stuff doesn't really matter too much; particularly since I can get most music off Amazon cheaper in the end.
And in response to iapetus, it's not Apple that's assuming users of ITMS are criminials; this has more to do with the RIAA wanting DRMs with legal online music stores to protect copyrighted content. Without that, no one, not Apple, not Real, and not Microsoft, would be able to negotiate with the RIAA for music tracks.
There are currently three totally incompatible standards and it's the consumers who lose out. This cannot last. If there was one universal standard, no company would be "cashing in on the iPod's success" anymore than Adobe cashes in on Windows' success or Valve cashes in on ATI's success. Apple's fanbase loves to cast things as "Apple against the world", when in fact it's Apple that creates that mentality with decisions like being defensive with FairPlay. Rather, this is about the fact that music is a commodity and having three different standards that artificially screw up the market is assinine.
BigJonsson
Member
Can't this guy just use another service that supports non-iPOD devices?
Hitman said:
No, I get it. I get that he expects people to believe that he went into iTMS blind, deaf, and dumb and was shocked - shocked - when he learned that the only portable player his purchased music would play on was an iPod.
Complete interoperablity between DRM'd files simply isn't here. There are too many egos involved, and too much money at stake.
Anthropic said:
Yeah, so where's the line of people ready to sue Sony for their Connect service? That place is all ATRAC, all the time.
That's not the issue. It is perfectly legal to develop a system which uses proprietary formats, and quite frankly, it makes great business sense.Anthropic said:
The issue (as I understand it) is that Apple refuses to license Fairplay to anyone else. I will discuss this with the lawyer GF over dinner, but I don't see why Apple should be forced to license a proprietary standard to anyone who wants it, or even to a few selected parties. Microsoft may choose to license their WMA DRM to anyone who wants it...but their goal is to make THEIR propretary format the de facto standard. Apple wants the same thing, but their path is to gain marketshare for their portables, and making the iTMS compatible only with the iPod is a way to accomplish that.
Anthropic said:
I'm not casting this as "Apple against the world" just for the record. If anything, the lawsuit and its supporters are. I'm just saying this situation applies to a number of different technological products at the moment. I do wish standards would be more widely settled, but it's been this way for years now and will likely continue to be for some to come.
Regardless, Ars Technica has a very insightful take on the matter: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050106-4508.html. They certainly help put the suit into context and provide an accurate diagnosis and angle on the case.
Jinx:
True, but from the consumer's point of view, it is the issue. This guy isn't suing because he can't license FairPlay. Also, as I understand it, Apple is working on licensing FairPlay to companies outside the online music fray such as Motorolla and Macrovision. The problem is that they won't license FairPlay to anyone that matters.
Macam:
On the other side of the coin, essentially everyone else who sells players is trying to give the user the most open, feature-filled experience possible. Apple has created a situation where their whole business model in this market revolves around not giving you the most open experience possible. I cannot see that as a good thing.
Yes, Apple blazed new ground by effectively inventing the online music store and by popularizing HD MP3 players. However, since that time they've stopped blazing new ground and started championing forced incompatibility.
True, but from the consumer's point of view, it is the issue. This guy isn't suing because he can't license FairPlay. Also, as I understand it, Apple is working on licensing FairPlay to companies outside the online music fray such as Motorolla and Macrovision. The problem is that they won't license FairPlay to anyone that matters.
Macam:
I think the core of the problem here is that of all of the companies in the legal online music business, Apple is the one in the least position to back down from a proprietary DRM system towards an industry standard DRM system. Sony is in as much of a position to sell music as it is to sell players. Napster, Wallmart, Real, etc all want to sell you music. Apple wants to sell you an iPod. To everyone else, intercompatability would be a feature. To Apple, it's a poison.
On the other side of the coin, essentially everyone else who sells players is trying to give the user the most open, feature-filled experience possible. Apple has created a situation where their whole business model in this market revolves around not giving you the most open experience possible. I cannot see that as a good thing.
Yes, Apple blazed new ground by effectively inventing the online music store and by popularizing HD MP3 players. However, since that time they've stopped blazing new ground and started championing forced incompatibility.
Anthropic said:
I'd say that Motorola matters, they have phones on every major US carrier, and they're starting to nip at Nokia's heels as well. I'm sure if things with Motorola go well, you'll see more iTunes-enabled phones, especially now that Samsung is starting to put hard drives in them.
The iPod supports AAC/MP4, MP3, WAV, AIFF, and Apple Lossless. Between those formats, the average user will probably be fine. In fact, straight AAC, which is what iTunes encodes, is a completely open format that any player in the world is free to adopt and support.
Exactly what do you want them to champion, other company's products? Apple is primarily a hardware company, and that's what they want to sell. If you want to listen to music downloaded from iTMS on the go, guess what you need? Yeah, an iPod. If you want to listen to music downloaded from Connect, guess what you need? Yeah, a Sony device that supports ATRAC. Incidentally, focusing on Sony would bolster your arguments considerably. Up until recently, they were notoriously married to ATRAC; even your own music wouldn't play on anything other than a Sony MD or HDD-based player. You want to talk about open experiences? Apple's not the bad guy here. Hell, let's go one step further: Real's Rhapsody service uses proprietary DRM as well. As of August '04, the only player to support that was the Creative Zen, and a few odd Palm devices.
Apple's not alone in this mentality, you speak as if they are.
iPod supports a total of one (1) type of legally downloaded music.
I just ripped 1900 songs as 224kbps AACs. I am aware. As far as I'm concerned, AAC is awesome. Real uses it too, as a matter of fact.
It's simple...A user buys music. He then puts it on his portable device. He doesn't have to worry about what format that music is, just that he bought it legally, just like every other music format going back to when the LP/45 standards were formalized. I'm not talking about a flight to Mars here.
And Sony rightly got its ass kicked on that, and was forced to change. My point was that hell would not have to freeze over for all the other companies outside of Apple to put down their arms and standardize.
All of these companies are guilty to some extent, but Apple is unique in that sells both a store/player and the iPod. For example, if more devices supported AAC, Real could support more devices. Real doesn't need it's store to justify another product like Apple does. Apple's products all justify each other in such a way that they are the deepest entrenched of any of these companies. As a result, there is far less of a chance that they'll change.
What does "most open, feature-filled experience possible" MEAN, and why is it a good thing? That makes absolutely no sense to me, and I've read it multiple times.Anthropic said:
A business, in general, would like to use proprietary formats as a way of "locking in" business. If that strategy is successful, and does not result in a monopoly, then the business has done well. However, I suspect that proprietary formats are often a DETRIMENT in the market -- you limit your userbase to those who are willing to also purchase the other parts of the system which rely on that proprietary format. Quite frankly, I think that ATRAC is one of the main reasons that Sony's Minidisc players never took off, and Memory Sticks are also not very popular. However, as always, the way it's SUPPOSED to work is that the market will settle the question about whether a proprietary format adds values or not. If you don't want to deal with expensive Memory Sticks, you don't buy Sony cameras.
No one is FORCING anyone to buy an iPod. The iPod does not depend on anything from the iTMS to operate -- it can operate just fine with the "open" standards you champion. Music from the iTMS also does not require that you own an iPod -- you can listen to it on your computer, burn it to CD, transcode it into another form, and so on. Also, with very few exceptions, the music available on iTMS is available from other sources and in other formats. So how is a particular choice of DRM restricting a consumer's access to that music? How can you make the case that Apple has ANY kind of monopoly on the portable music player market when so many other choices are available? And why are formats like MP3 and DRM-protected WMA considered to be "open" when there are licensing rights associated with them as well?
I don't think that guy's case has a leg to stand on from a legal point, and I never stated that I thought he did. However, the basic problem he's addressing will still exist until:
Option 1. The industry standardizes on one DRM standard. This just has to be a standard wrapper. The actual datastream would not need to be standardized. Apple and Real could stick with AAC if they wanted.
Option 2. The alternative, as proposed in the Ars Technica article that Macam posted, would be to ammend the law so that "it is not a violation of this section to circumvent a technological measure in connection with access to, or the use of, a work if such circumvention does not result in an infringement of the copyright in the work',"...That would make Hymn and other methods of breaking FairPlay legal.
In the current legal climate, Option 1 is more feasible. However, you and I both know Apple would never go for it because they are too entrenched in their current inflexible business model (which is not unusual for Apple).
On one's computer, you're forced to have iTunes/Quicktime installed to play .m4p files (the Winamp plugin requires them). Don't want qttask runinng? Too bad. The user loses choice. You can burn the music to CD, but you lose the whole benefit of buying it online in the first place, in that it's compressed and more highly portable. The user loses choice. You can transcode it, but that's legally questionable. What's the point of legally buying music anyways if you have to break the law to gain an acceptable level of mobility with it? That's a lose of choice.
Suddenly, you're locked into one music software solution and one portable player. If you change your mind, you can't listen to you music. Is that acceptable? Is making the user go through hoops (CD burning, illegal transcoding, etc) to play music they bought acceptable?
Granted, these problems exist with every current DRM solution. That's why there needs to be an industry standard. But, as I said before, Apple is the most entrenched.
I'm talking about an open experience, not open standards. An open experience is where:
It's simple...A user buys music. He then puts it on his portable device. He doesn't have to worry about what format that music is, just that he bought it legally, just like every other music format going back to when the LP/45 standards were formalized. I'm not talking about a flight to Mars here.
Obviously, a DRM standard is never going to be "open" in any open source or licensing sense. However, the experience can be open for the user in the sense that the user actually has choices about who he purchases his music from and how he plays it.
1) I don't understand why you keep bringing up "choice." If you want to listen to music purchased from iTMS, then you need iTunes, and optionally an iPod. If you don't want to install iTunes and the other associated software, then don't buy music from iTMS. You sound like you're complaining that you can't selectively disable part of the software suite required to play .m4p, and that doesn't make any sense. Does it bother you that you don't have the "choice" to disable your catalytic converter when you drive your car?Anthropic said:
2) I think you're wrong about the benefit of buying music online. I think it has little to nothing to do with loading music onto a portable player, and the fact that it's compressed is a NEGATIVE, not a positive -- compression is a concession to limited network bandwidth. The benefits of buying from iTMS are a) cost savings compared to typical CD prices, b) instant availability of product rather than requiring a trip to a brick-and-mortar store or waiting for delivery of a physical item from an online merchant, c) ability to purchase single tracks rather than entire albums, and d) ability to preview any track prior to purchase. None of those benefits are lessened in the slightest by a particular choice of end use.
3) Transcoding music you have purchased is legal, just as ripping music from CDs you own for personal use is legal.
4) I don't know why you think there is an implicit "right to mobility" for a purchased music file. It is CLEARLY explained that purchasing the .m4p will allow you to a) play it in iTunes, b) play it in your iPod, or c) burn it to a CD. If you want to do something other than a, b, or c, then DON'T BUY IT.
By the same "logic" you're laying out above, then you should be upset that a video game designed for Xbox "locks you in" to owning an Xbox, and should be arguing that once you buy a copy of Burnout 3 (or whatever), you should be able to play it on PS2 or Gamecube.
There is a fundamental tension between what consumers want, and what businesses want. What ultimately resolves the tension is the market -- if the consumer feels that a system IS trying to lock them in and doesn't provide the right value for their money, then it will die off. But the phenomenal success of iTMS and iPod seems to indicate that people are quite happy with what Apple is offering, and they CLEARLY do not have a monopoly on their market. So why do we need this lawsuit?
That's not it at all. By investing in music from iTMS, a user has to effectively get out their crystal ball and make sure they never again use a non-Apple music player or portable music device. That's damned silly.
But the point is that you can only make the choice once. Once you commit to Real, or iTMS, or whatever, you're locked in unless you want to say goodbye to your old music, baring ridiculous burning to CD or legally questionable transcoding.
From the DMCA:
`(a) VIOLATIONS REGARDING CIRCUMVENTION OF TECHNOLOGICAL MEASURES- (1)(A) No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
It's a stupid law, but it's the law.
By the same "logic" you're laying out above, then you should be upset that a video game designed for Xbox "locks you in" to owning an Xbox, and should be arguing that once you buy a copy of Burnout 3 (or whatever), you should be able to play it on PS2 or Gamecube.[/quote]
There's two problems with this argument:
1. The difference is that there are real technical reasons why you can't play Burnout 3 PS2 on XBox. The instruction sets, the APIs, the hardware, is totally different. As Real proved, there's no technical reason why an iPod can't play a Real-DRM file. There's no technical reason why a Zen shouldn't be able to play an .m4p. The datastream inside of a protected AAC is the same no matter what type of DRM is used. The differences in the streams of instructions sent to a PS2 and an XBox to put Burnout 3 on the screen are very non-trivial. Now, it's possible that you could create Burnout 3 in say, Java or something, where every game console would get the same stream of high level instructions. However, you'd be lucky to get 1fps as you watch a blocky mess pile up on the screen. The consumer very much benefits from the different versions of Burnout 3. However, in the case of the music, the distinctions are totally artificial, the differences are trivial, put in place to screw the consumer, rather than to benefit him.
2. There are real differences in console libraries. Sony has Gran Turismo no because they were simply the first ones to license it (like the difference in music libraries), but because they created it to show off their platform. In other words, there are actual style and creative differences between platforms. Halo, Mario, Gran Turismo, etc. With the DRMed music industry, all of the music is the same and comes from the same place. With consoles the format actually means something. With today's DRM music, the format is totally transparent.
I've decided to sue Apple since my Mac applications do not work on my PC. This makes no sense to me as I think all computer files should be interchangable between any operating system. Apple has cornered the market on Application files, and I believe that breaks anti-trust laws.
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