March 16, 2005
"it's like watching the buggy whip industry getting a whip made mandatory for every car"
Brilliant article from Hamish:
Would You Like to Buy A Soviet Photocopier, Tsovarich?
Want something that even Stalin wouldn’t have dreamed about? Let corporate interests decide what you can and cannot do on equipment you own? Your PC is about to become the ultimate Soviet Photocopier, that will only allow you approved thoughts and actions. Yep! Sounds like tin foil hat time, but let’s look at it again, and let’s see how real it is.I would love to hear Mr Scoble's thoughts on this one. Or anyone from Sony. Apple I care less about because, well, they're Apple. Posted by hugh macleod at March 16, 2005 1:09 PM | TrackBack...
If you want to see a real closed device, then look at the Sony “MP3” players. These lame brained things wanted to load your MP3s on the computer, and then convert them into ATRAC (?) format. Why? So that you wouldn’t pirate music or something, because they have a music division. Arrgh. Betamax, Mini-Disc, and then ATRAC. Somebody in Sony needs to get the idea that a technically superior standard does not a market make. In surprise and shock at having single-handedly lost the personal music player market that they owned, they recently decided to move to the open standards camp, but guys, weak move and too late. And this has commercial consequences, look at what Samsung has done to them.
I use to know people that would flaunt all the sony gear the could afford. Now they flaunt all the Apple gear they can afford.
Apple will go the way Sony has if they dont get smarter about their conversation.
I use to love my iPod. Now I hate fucking iTunes.
Posted by: Dan at March 16, 2005 1:31 PMFrankly, "Apple is good because they're Apple" doesn't cut it anymore. They have good products, (almost-)monopolies here and there (music players, online music stores, and unix-based workstations, perhaps), but we may look at ourselves years, maybe months from now and think "hah, iPods, remember when we used to wear and worship those like they were the second coming"? White plastic and brushed metal is just waiting for something else to come up to lose its hip factor.
And what are you going to do with the music you bought when you want to sell your old iPod and get something from the next big fashion wave that doesn't use Apple's DRM?
Good question, indeed.
Posted by: Carlos Villela at March 16, 2005 3:34 PMI'm firmly on the side of no DRM and finding alternate means of distribution and monetization, but Hamish is a few months late with this.
Sony has enabled its players to read DRM-free MP3s for a little while now, after seeing that they weren't making a dent in Apple's marketshare.
So while the end-to-end experience is not yet on par with Apple (which is the real strength of the iPod), the technical issue of DRM is at least somewhat mitigated.
If you do buy tracks through Sony's Connect service, they are ATRAC3s, just as when you buy tracks through iTunes, they are AACs.
Personally, I'm thinking of buying my music in Russia (allofmp3.com).
Posted by: adi at March 16, 2005 4:16 PMHi Adi
You're right, the Sony stuff is not hot off the press, but the generally trend stuff is still more or less on track. As for AllofMP3.com, joined recently, and it's GOOD. Still slightly nervous about having my credit card details floating about in Russia, but so far so good. I've gotten about 218 files at absolute top quality for about 45 bucks.
Posted by: Hamish at March 16, 2005 4:30 PMI'm a proponent of user choice and flexibility.
I'll think about a better answer. That's a long article.
Posted by: Robert Scoble at March 17, 2005 3:07 AMThe Pc is the perfect copying machine - all DRM attempts to defeat that perfection. In the end DRM will fail and with it will fail a great many business models because, in the end, the people who cannot avoid making music will always do so and will always get a live gig if they are any good, the hangers on with no talent except the ability to "monitize" (a disgusting word!) someone elses talent will disappear. But first they will attempt to use the law to solve a technological problem and that will cause everybody a huge amount of grief.
Posted by: geoff lane at March 17, 2005 8:57 AM