Antitrust lawsuit against Apple?

Well, when one company occupies such a large percentage of the online audio/video market and hardware market, it's bound to come up eventually...

Information Week is reporting on Plaintiff Stacie Somers who filed suit on Dec 31 (Happy New Year?), claiming Apple maintains an illegal monopoly on the digital music market.

Apparently the major point of contention is Apple's unwillingness to support protected media from sources other than iTunes.

The complaint takes issue with Apple's refusal to support the Windows Media Audio format. "Apple's iPod is alone among mass-market Digital Music Players in not supporting the WMA format," it states, noting that America Online, Wal-Mart, Napster, MusicMatch, Best Buy, Yahoo Music, FYE Download Zone, and Virgin Digital all support protected WMA files.

The suit goes on to claim that even though the iPod is physically capable of playing protected media from sources other than iTunes, this feature is deliberately crippled in the player's software.

What I'm unclear on, and what the article doesn't really elaborate on, is the injury to the consumer.

As for the injury to consumers, the complaint says that Apple's pricing is "monopolistic, excessive, and arbitrary," citing how a wholesale $5.52 price difference between 1-Gbyte ($4.15) and 4-Gbyte ($9.67) NAND flash memory modules results in a $100 retail price difference between 1-Gbyte iPod Nano and a 4-Gbyte Nano.
If the complaint is with the software, I don't understand what the price inflation of the hardware has to do with that, other than the obvious claim of collusion with memory makers.

Another interesting point (briefly touched on) is the recent popularity of DRM free music (Sony recently caving for example), and it's unclear what impact that might have on the suit.

Apple of course has no comment.

Read the whole article here @ Information Week

Blu-Ray Playback Problems Linked to Copy Protection?

You all know how I feel about DRM and copy protection.
I'm pretty much against any ACTIVE protection. I'm a big fan of watermarking and passive protection. Basically any protection that prevents people from playing the content equals, and anything that will link the content back to who originally owned it equals good.
I think content needs to be payed for, and if you buy something and are dumb enough to put it up on the web, well that's your problem...

My problem with active protection is that it doesn't work. It only prevents the paying customers from watching it the way they want to. Anyone who wants to get around it will.

Case in point, Sony's latest batch of Blu-Ray's "Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer" and "Day After Tomorrow", both chock full of Sony's latest copy protection, dont play well with older Blu-Ray players by Samsung and LG. There have been other problems reported with BD+ Copy Protection, but usually with special features content not the movies themselves.

Highdefdigest.com has the scoop:

The most severe problems have been reported on Samsung's BDP-1200
and LG's BH100, which are both said to be incapable of playing back the
discs at all. Less catastophic issues (error messages and playback
stutter) have been reported for Samsung's BDP-1000. The discs appear to
play back fine on all other Blu-ray players (including the PlayStation
3), although users have reported lengthy load times of up to two
minutes.
It has been widely speculated that these issues stem from the use of
BD+ copy protection on the two discs. We contacted Fox for comment, but
so far there's no official word from the studio.
Calls placed to both Samsung and LG customer support revealed that
both manufacturers are aware of the issue, and that both are working on
firmware updates to correct it. Samsung promised a firmware update
within "a couple" weeks, while LG said an update is expected in 3-4
days.

Read the rest here.

The need for DRM circumvention | Google selleth then taketh away

Google is pulling their premium video service.
Did you buy anything from them? I had an episode of Macgyver just to check it out.
Well now that's all gone...

Google just demonstrated how completely bizarre and anti-consumer DRM technology can be. Most importantly, by pulling the plug on its service, Google just proved why consumers have to be allowed to circumvent copy controls.

So with no way to get around DRM, we'll forever be perpetually renting our media. Fun!

Should be interesting to see how the Universal Music/Google team up will be since those files will be drm free.

read more | digg story

Be on the Look Out Aug21! Google and Universal Partner up to Fight iTunes

Just read off of Gizmodo.
Google will be teaming up with Universal Music to offer DRM free tracks at .99 cents. This will undercut iTunes on copy protection free tracks, and will give Universal access to Google's advertising might. Just image Google's adwords linking directly to a song at a buck. This could be the first real competition for iTunes, and will work across ALL music players (including the iPod).
I'm all for MORE competition. KEEP THE PRICES LOW!

Here's Gizmodo's write up.

Here's Forbes' story.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Survey says: only DRM-free music is worth paying for

I don't trust surveys.

Numbers can be generated to support any claim (83% of all people know that).

Still, doesn't mean I wont link to a survey with results I agree with!

"A survey of general music consumers shows that concern about the negative effects of DRM are on the rise, and that consumers are beginning to rule out purchasing DRM'd music in big numbers."

read more | digg story

Do The Electric Slide, Violate The DMCA???

Not quite that simple, but sure why not?
We all know about and love the DMCA (sure). For those that don't, the overly simplistic explanation of the DMCA is, you are not allowed to circumvent copy protection, and you can't post copyrighted materials online. This already technically screws us on DVD's, as we're allowed to make a back up for personal use, but anything we use to make the back up (that can get around copy protection) is horribly illegal.
Now apparently if you take a video of your crazy Aunt Iris doing the electric slide (badly) at your brother-in-law Ted's wedding (and I mean come on, who are they kidding, that wedding will never last, he's only with the skank because she pretended to have that pregnancy scare right? Right? I knOw!), and post that vid on Youtube for the whole extended family to enjoy, you can get slapped around legally for that as well. CNet has a fairly concise write up on the whole bloody affair: CLICK HERE TO READ 'Electric Slide' on slippery DMCA slope And for good measure, here's a vid of people doing the electric slide badly: YAY! DMCA VIOLATION!

***EDIT***

WHOA!
Big OLD SORRY FOLKS! I totally forgot to mention that this was a write up on Idolator, so for even good-er measure I'll also post the vid that was linked on Gizmodo:




It's two...Two...TWO CLIPS IN ONE!
some audio guy someaudioguy dmca riaa copyright law youtube