The EU’s ongoing joust with iTunes

By John Carroll

In what some articles have characterized as an EU that has backed down over iTunes, Meglena Kuneva, EU Commissioner for Consumer Protection, re-characterized her previous words that chastised Apple over its closed DRM model as merely a means by which to start the debate over ways "to develop this market and to have more consumers enjoying the really very important, very modern way of downloading and enjoying the music." She also dismissed comparisons of Apple to Microsoft, noting that Apple's share of the market is not very large. I presume she means Apple's computer market share is not very large. I wish Microsoft could point to their portable music player share (an area where Apple's share IS very large) as reason for the EC to call off their antitrust attack dogs.

Slight diversion aside, the cause of all this ruckus was Ms. Kuneva making a sharp point of the fact that we wouldn't accept CDs that didn't play on every device. That point was always a bit odd, however, as its like pointing out that doors in the middle ages rarely had locks as reason to oppose the proliferation of locks on doors. CDs weren't ever designed with the Internet in mind, where ripped music files can be sent around the world as easily as email.


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Free Software Foundation to Jobs: Be First to Drop DRM

By Shaun Nichols

A branch of the Free Software Foundation known as DefectiveByDesign launched an online petition last week that calls on Apple CEO Steve Jobs to "set the ethical example" by eliminating DRM from iTunes. The petition, a response to an open letter on digital rights management Jobs wrote in February, reached its initial goal of one thousand signatures about five hours after going live.

The Free Software Foundation has begun an online petition urging Apple chief executive Steve Jobs to begin removing protections from the company's iTunes Music Store.

"As the largest purveyor of DRMed music, Apple carries a large part of the responsibility for the situation in which consumers now find themselves," the petition reads.


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Want a Better Product? Try Piracy

When Napster was public enemy number one, the music industry made the point that downloaded music was often of inferior quality than the original CD - which was often true. Strange, then, that some TV studios are providing legal downloads via iTunes that fall short.

The story begins with Jeff (I'm sure he has a last name, but I don't know what it is) over on the-ish.com, who noted that when he buys an episode of Lost on iTunes, it has a 4:3 aspect ratio, which is cropped from the 16:9 widescreen image that HDTV viewers see.

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'Why I don't believe Steve Jobs'

We may see the end of protected music downloads, but it won't be Apple's doing, argues columnist Bill Thompson.

For a company with a tiny share of the computer market and an increasingly perilous first mover advantage selling portable music players Apple punches well above its weight in coverage of its every move.

In January CEO Steve Jobs single-handedly distracted the attention of the world's technology press from the hundreds of announcements taking place at the Computer Electronics Show in Las Vegas by pulling out an iPhone on stage in San Francisco.

The recent settlement of the long-running dispute with Apple Corps over the use of the Apple name garnered thousands of column inches and millions of page views online as aging editors took yet another opportunity to hope that the 40-year old Beatles music they grew up with could top the charts once again.

And much of the attention focused on the possibility that Beatles songs would be available on Apple's iTunes Music Store rather than any of the other download services available, giving Apple even more coverage.

This was followed by widespread coverage of the UK versions of the Mac versus PC ads, with David Mitchell and Robert Webb sacrificing any comic credibility their characters may have had on the altar of commercialism.


Read more on BBC News