{"id":3376,"date":"2003-10-21T11:35:14","date_gmt":"2003-10-21T15:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/2003\/10\/21\/ars-technica-on-windows-itunes-and-e"},"modified":"2003-10-21T11:35:14","modified_gmt":"2003-10-21T15:35:14","slug":"ars-technica-on-windows-itunes-and-even-more-on-itunes-drm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/2003\/10\/21\/ars-technica-on-windows-itunes-and-even-more-on-itunes-drm\/","title":{"rendered":"Ars Technica on Windows iTunes, and Even More on iTunes DRM"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Update: Follow the discussion<\/A> in the comments section – good points, and some clarification from me.<\/STRONG><\/P>
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Read the editorial here.<\/A> Then, check out Apple’s MPEG-4 page<\/A> to see what a contradiction the AAC\/Fairplay combo is.  Key quote: “No longer will content providers need to encode, host, and store media in multiple formats. Instead, a single format can reach a broad audience equipped with playback devices from not one, but a multitude of companies across a wide array of platforms.”<\/FONT><\/P>
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Where’s the multitude of devices for iTunes songs?  What’s the good of an open standard if everyone creates their own proprietary substandard?<\/P>
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In a sense, are the players – Apple, Microsoft together with the other music stores – acting like we’re at the “early adopter” phase? They’re laying the foundations by trying to win a standards battle. Apple is trying to win through restrictions and tie-ins to the iPod; the iPod is not affordable for most people, but that usually wouldn’t matter to early adopters, because they are generally more wealthy. And so long as the music industry is forcing them to use DRM, Apple might as well take advantage of it.<\/P>
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The thing is, MP3 and P2P have in a sense already pushed us past that early adopter phase. People have already chosen a format. Apple has to not only beat WMA, but also MP3. <\/P>
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So, I think the move is risky if Apple hopes to reach a wide audience. Short-term, it might work. But long term, I’m not so sure if consumers will put up with this format lock-in.  Any model that tries to make the digital world look like the analog world<\/A> in this way<\/A> is regressive<\/A>, and, eventually, regressive models should die out in favor of progressive ones.<\/P>
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Perhaps Apple isn’t really seeking a wide-audience. Maybe they just want to get slightly past the 3-4 percent of the computer market they already control.  In that case, making people who buy from the iTunes Store also use expensive Apple hardware might be just fine, because all they need to capture are the wealthiest buyers.  In that case, iTunes itself is really just a blip on the digital music radar – it won’t be a significant music store.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Update: Follow the discussion in the comments section – good points, and some clarification from me. Read the editorial here. Then, check out Apple’s MPEG-4 page to see what a contradiction the AAC\/Fairplay combo is.  Key quote: “No longer will content providers need to encode, host, and store media in multiple formats. Instead, a single format can reach […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-ideas"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/72"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3376\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}