@jbang

And also remember that it locks you into your regional store. so if what you want is not available from your local store then you have to figure out how to get it some other way.

You would think that the entire libraries would be linked and price adjusted... but no.

dOk

Heres whats really going to happen. Apple goes before this gay council and says screw you guys I'm going home!! and then Norwegians have to deal with apple for another day.

bdk185

@jbang: I have a feeling that Apple's branding of the iPod will probably keep it from loosing significant market share if they removed all DRM. However, this is a two sided market and the sale of ipods essentially subsidizes the price so it may be possible that itunes pricing may have to increase if there is a sign that market share drops significantly.

Veeber

I just don't buy DRM content. Amazon sells unprotected MP3 cheaper then iTunes. I just import them into iTunes....

alphadog00

It's about time Europe took some of their money, they've been in everyone else's pockets for years. I guess that's when you know you are big, Europe cites some 'openess' rule and takes a chunck of your money.

rrogahn

As a proud Norwegian-American, I'm a little sad at how badly my homeland is going to get roughed up by His Jobsyness.

If it looks like they'll lose, they'll just pull out (R Kelly style!). The cost of them losing FairPlay is huge compared to the cost of losing one tiny market.

m4ximusprim3

Norway: knock knock....."Open up it's Norway!!!!"

Apple: "NO", We Don't Want To"

Norway: "um, ok" see ya later dudes".

Faslane66

Everyone who thinks that Apple will do anything to make FairPlay work on other mp3 players raise your hand. Uh, yeah, me too. Seems to me there are some Norse governmental types who have been dipping into the medicinal pot stash.

davidwb

They are doing Apple's work for them. iPods still get sold, Apple wins. Record companies slow their sales, they reconsider DRM.

Good times and herring.

Slappy McSlapp

The latter is the only thing that'll happen.

I'm in two minds about FairPlay. On one hand, DRM - die, die, die! It is the filth and the scum. On the other it's helped Apple gain dominance in the PMP market and as a total fanboy it warms my heart.

But I think the DRM, die, die, die! sentiment wins here. Especially now Apple has the position, and it's got alot more to do than just locking iTunes store customers into their devices (not all iPod users, you can be a savvy consumer and get your media free and open and still use it on your Pod). So you can sort of commend ye olde Norway, but if they stick to their guns it just means one less legit place - and a big one at that - to get your media.

jbang

@Rand: Wake up, you can't type today.

Rand

Uhhhhh Norway, go after the real problem...the people who require the content providers...the recording companies. Apple shouldn't be required to share the fairplay DRM. The spent a lot of time and money developing products that met the high and mighty demands of the recording studios, they should get to keep what ever revenues it generates. If you don't like it....get rid of ALL DRM at the source, the record companies.

Rand

Go norway.

We did crack the iTunes DRM a long time ago. Just like the DVD DRM (DVD John anyone??)

Cheers. And love to everyone who went to RCN UWC (www.uwc.org)

googlesmith

Blitzkreig!!!

qhead7

um... Norway, really?

unkpku is think that new comments are like iPhone 3G pre 2.1, yeah it sucks

Wouldnt you say Apple has enough weight against the record companies to say 'screw you guys the music will be sold DRM free?'

And selling it DRM free for $2.50 is obscene. Its like a used car salesman saying 'Yeah, it will cost you $500 extra for the car NOT to be filled with gravel'

Aturayd

DRM... *sigh* Why wont you just die? You are slowing down progress and fighting against the inevitable (like people that want to stop beach erosion). Please just... Just GTFOH.

Echelondagod

Norway wasn't neutral. You're thinking of the Swedes.

If you make this mistake in person, you're gonna get your ass kicked. (Yes, they're still mad about it.)

TommySez

Apple will most likely pull out of Norway. People got along with MP3 players before the iPod, they can live without iTunes now.

The only side that's losing anything is Apple, as they will lose the market share in an entire country.

Shook-Yang

funny how people think that Steve Jobs pulling iTunes out of Norway (and eventually the rest of Scandinavia, Germany, Holland, France etc etc) is bad for those countries. In the end, Jobs ends up looking like a psychotic monopolist who is so cemented in his "principles" that he loses sight of the bigger picture: Making money!

The whole point of the iTunes battle in Europe is that since Apple does not own the music they are selling, they can't tie it exclusively to their devices. Just like Sony can't start selling Blu-Ray discs that will only play in Sony players.

It all boils down to a simple question: what happens when your iPod eventually dies? The way it is now, the consumer is stuck with music that can't be played unless she buys another iPod. In other words the songs she bought and paid for are now held hostage by an evil monopolist who doesn't care about his customers.

In the end Steve Jobs loses because Europeans in the end care more about music than they do about iPods. And trust me, once iTunes falls in Norway it'll cascade through the continent and good old Steve will be left with his beard in the mail box as we say in Norway.

mor10

If Microsoft had started this all and was in the same position Apple is now, there would not me a single person defending M$, but since Apple has introduced this model to the mainstream everyone seems to be OK with it. That is not to mention that iTunes will not sync with any other music player. I don't understand people's unconditional love for Apple, their products aren't that great (the iPod is the most popular, not because it has the best sound quality, or the best features, but because people seem to like Apple for some reason). Get over the Apple love and realize that they need to support competitors products as well as their own. If they can't do DRM stuff on other company's products, they could at least support the non DRM stuff in iTunes.

CyberG4

Well yeah it sucks for iTunes to use DRM on its stuff but nobody's making people buy stuff from iTunes so I don't see the case here.

bazaar_apparatus

@CyberG4: They don't want to support competitors products. Why? Simple it costs them money. They have to test all releases of iTunes with a competitors product, they have to provide some level of tech support with all competitors products. Its a huge undertaking. Look at the cost/trouble they are having supporting iTunes under Windows. Also if they go down that road, eventually they will find themselves in the same boat as Microsoft with the EU and Justice telling them what they can and cannot make a part of their operating system, computers, etc. They wisely (in a business sense) don't want to go there.

Rand

mor10: That sounds valid... Except for the fact that you are free to burn your music (DRM'ed or not) to a universally supported medium (CD) inside of iTunes!

I think the problem here is the record companies, not Apple. I dont think Jobs could have secured as many artists/labels as they currently have without some assurance that there wouldnt be rampant piracy going on with the format. Remeber back when the whole Napster/Metallica crap hit the fan? The labels were not prepared and thought the world was coming to an end, which lead to their stupid RIAA and lawsuits out the ass.

I dont fault Apple for having to put the DRM in place. It served it's purpose to placate the record companies and allow for much faster adoption of this new music distribution method.

I will say, for the record, that I do not trust the target demographic for most music with the keys to the kingdom. I would predict that the removal of DRM would lead to an absurd increase in music piracy. You can't stop those that really want the song, they will find a way. But, DRM inhibits casual piracy, IMHO.

On another note, I have not looked past my blinders to see what's offered by Amazon, Rhapsody, and others. Do they offer the same bands/songs as iTunes? I was lead to believe the music might be DRM free or all-you-can-eat for 1 price, but it was a bunch of crap no-name, no-talent artists (except maybe some of the older classics). If they are top name bands/songs, then the market place has solved the problem already. Quit using iTunes to buy stuff! iTunes/iPods work fine with straight MP3 files.

KenK

This is all from politicians who don't have a clue. Politicians, if they were any good at anything, would have real jobs doing something other than working for the government.

yikz

@googlesmith: Actually, it's DVD Jon. I think he's back in Norway so I guess if Apple doesn't do it he will.

jabber

@alphadog00: Why anyone would do anything other than going to Amazon is insanity to me.

ALT

Amazon's store works pretty damn well and it's DRM free. I've never once purchased a song from iTunes because of it's DRM. You want them to get rid of it? Stop buying billions of songs from them. They'll get the picture eventually.

aural

@jbang: it's [DRM] helped Apple gain dominance in the PMP market
Rubbish. Nobody fired up iTunes and thought "Wow, these songs I bought from the store only play on my iPod, I'm so happy with that."

DRM == Digital Restrictions Management

skierpage

@googlesmith: Actually there is a better way with no loss of quality a program called Requiem can take off DRM by decoding using the same method as itunes and create DRM free file and it works with video. Downside is it will need to be run on a licensed computer before moving it to an unlicensed one. Just google it

Zomb

I don't imagine it so much being Apple's fault, but more likely the fault of the record companies who own the music they are selling. Something to the effect of,

"Hey, Sony, we here at Apple would like to sell some of your music."
"How would you sell it?"
"Well we'd like to keep it fre..."
"Nope, sorry. Only if you put some sort of protection on it will we allow you to sell it"
"Ohhh, OK. Well then, we'll put some DRM on it and only allow users to use it within iTunes and our iPods! That way, we'll both make money."
"Sounds like a plan! Go for it."

That's pretty much what every major company is forced to do, and why unprotected music is so little. It ends up benefiting both companies and makes "everybody" happy. The record label has their music protected so it doesn't get stolen as easily and they can gouge customers for whatever they want, not allow anyone but them "ownership" of the music, and the company selling it gets to force people to use their product and gain a little market share over time.

Only the customers lose! And since a majority of people don't know or care the corporations are allowed to rape us repeatedly.

madog

If you can get your music DRM free from Amazon, why is this an issue? It's obviously not for a lot of happy iTunes customers. Yay free market and all that.

KenK

@madog: We are like-minded on most details. You raise a good point about Apple picking their own proprietary DRM method. What else was available at the time? At least Apple's DRM hasn't turned into the Play-For-Sure/Wal-Mart fiasco (yet?).

I don't know that the customer's are really losing more than we have gained. Things certainly are more convenient for me when it comes to shopping. And I like not having to buy the whole sucky album to get one song that doesnt suck. Buying the album costs about the same or less than a CD used to. There are some arguments to be made for audio quality, but other than that, I think we have gained more than we hove lost compared to the old distribution model with no increase in cost.

KenK

@TommySez: It was neutral until Germany invaded their ass.

matt buchanan

Norway iTunes store is going byebye.

markarian

*SNORE*

who cares...

it's not like Apple has a choice, just close the store, people will continue to purchase their music online, norway could just slap a online annoyance fee to the itunes store for having DRM, so your "99¢" track becomes "99¢ + Norway Fee Against DRM"

In most cases, people that buy a ipod product, suffer from buyers remorse, and then think they are trapped in the apple ecosystem (they have not learned to use anything other than the itunes store).

The only thing that will ever change that is a multi billion dollar online content store that provides software to work with any media player on any platform.

Good Luck.

skulldriveshaft

Wait...iTunes songs _ALREADY_ work on any digital music player. You just have to know how to make it work. In the iTunes program, there's a system that's set up where you can take a set of songs in one format and convert them to another format. If you take songs purchased from iTunes (with a full spread of DRM protection) and run them through this with the proper settings...it'll spit out new copies in the DRM-free MP3 format. And if it won't play MP3's, it's probably not designed to play digital music files.

It just mystifies me how the whole "ZOMG u have 2 buy ur iPod music from teh iTunes store n it won't work on anything else!" urban myth continues to persist. Neither is true.

Purple Dave

From the Inquirer

"Finland, Denmark, France, Germany and the Netherlands all back the Norwegian moves."

dropdeadcriminal

The Norwegian poeple really don't care. These are the actions of one stubborn bureaucrat.

(I really can't remember being obliterated)

Earl

I'm not so sure as a lot of you that this is an automatically lost cause. iTunes is already selling DRM-free tunes in Norway through the iTunes plus "label". There is the slim hope that any legal action might push through a completely DRM-free iTunes. I'm guessing it's the record labels that are reluctant to let go of their precious DRMing. But since quite a bit of music is already going DRM-free, the pressure will be on for the rest to follow. One possible outcome is Apple shutting down in Norway, sure, but I can see other possibilities as well. One being that all DRMed content is pulled from Norwegian iTunes (a lot of material is country exclusive today, why not based on DRM as well?).

HayesAlthaemenes

Nuh-uh! The overwhelming majority of iPods have no music from iTunes Store at all. Neither the iPod nor iTunes require FairPlay tracks exclusively. They can play anything. Apple's market share risk is minimal. The only ones losing money are the music companies.

EsmereldaImbesol

@ALT: And why anyone would use iTunes when they don't have to is an even deeper insanity to me.

Enochrewt

it's a system. it's a proprietary closed system.
but nobody's holding a gun to your head making you buy it!!!

if you don't like it, don't buy it!!! (i don't!)

HoseHead

GO NORWAY! And the Apple Army and Apple Armada, as well as the Apple Aviators will be there shortly to attack it and turn it into the world's largest Apple store.

Con Seannery

@ALT: I buy physical media...

Con Seannery

It aint just Norway against Apple, They got Finalnd (ghasp!), France and Germany behind them. Though Germany is not the best ally (since they loose every time), but France will show some impact. Just hope Steve won't boicott the guitar formed land.

ZaneAnnalis