geeks talk music…
Once again, I present excerpts from Daves mailbox in lieu of a real entry written for OD. This time its a discussion between me and my friend Sam, who you need to understand is one of those militant open-source-software guys who use Linux, of all things. Anyway, I sent him an email about Apples new music-buying program if you havent heard about it, check out their website and this is the resulting conversation
Steve Jobs is a fucking God… I can’t believe Apple actually got this to happen!
http://www.apple.com/
So you need a Mac and a proprietary software product so you can download music in Apple’s proprietary-but-not-as-good-as-ogg format?
Correction… you need a Mac until the end of the year when it comes
out for Windows, and you need a FREE proprietary software product
Free-of-charge, but still encumbered by restrictions on use, modification, and distribution.
so you can download music in a “Who-gives a rats ass about sound quality
when you only listen to it on your iPod ANYWAY” format
Oh, so they control the hardware too? Oh yeah, I forgot that’s how they do things.
and so you can buy music that you LIKE for $5 an album minus the 5 other shitty
tunes that were just filler anyway and cost you $17 at Best Buy…
There’s your freedom! You can spend your money however you want, as long as it gets filtered through Apple.
They are gonna sell SHITLOADS of music, Mr. SmartyPenguin, mark my words…
I’m buying some just to indicate my approval.
I’m making a rude noise to indicate my opinion of Steve Jobs and his legions.
Boy, you’ve gotten downright snippy in your opensourcedness, haven’t
you? You getting much sleep lately?
I guess it just depends on what corporate monolith you personally
believe needs to be fucked more… the computer monopolies or the
record industry. I think the music business is far more in need of a
good fucking nowadays.
D.
Considering that the record companies are paying nothing for production,
distribution, or promotion of these songs, every penny that goes to the record
companies is profit. So if you buy a song from a CD that you wouldn’t have paid
for at the record store, you’re giving MORE money to the record companies.I’m
sure that their market research has told them that they’d come out ahead,
otherwise they wouldn’t have done it. I assume that Apple’s music format has some sort of copy prevention built in. Do you know?
Absolutely no copy protection. You OWN the music. And your license agreement entitles you to burn up to 10 copies of the file to CD, install it on your iPod, and up to three separate computers. As for the record companies getting the money… well, yeah… but they don’t get EVERY penny… I’m pretty sure Apple is getting a big chunk. But they are gonna get more than money, I think they are going to get a MESSAGE as well. First, stop spending a bazillion dollars on lawyers (and congressmen) to try to crack down on “illegal” file sharing and instead, try to figure out a way to give people something they are WILLING to pay for – for a price they are willing to pay. These record company guys still think blank cassettes should be illegal. It’s about time somebody dragged these people kicking and screaming into the 20th century. So, if it takes an authoritarian computer geek in a black turtleneck to make that happen, so be it.
(continued )