[nfb-talk] About Itunes.

[T. Joseph Carter]

On the positive side, there has been a lot of talk recently about a recent
letter written by Steve Jobs on the subject of the iTunes Music Store.  In
essence, he argues that the time for DRM has essentially passed--it's very
obvious that DRM has not prevented Copyright infringement.  It hasn't even
slowed it down a little!  Given that, he argues that it is in the big
four's best interest to allow Apple to dispense with the DRM entirely.

Why this matters to us is that the iTunes Music Store is literally just a
website that uses a custom web browser that handles your account and the
whole DRM process for downloaded music.  An ITMS client for Linux was
written, but may have since been killed off by Apple's contractual
obligation to enforce the whole DRM paradigm.

In other words, if Apple succeeds in convincing the big four that the DRM
thing isn't working and needs to go away to make customers happier, there
is no reason why an alternative to iTunes cannot begin to legitimately
exist.  In fact, you've already got at least one alternative--it just
needs to be told that it can handle itms URI designators.  The rest would
just be a little add-on for IE and Firefox that teaches them how to talk
to DAAP servers.


All of this assumes that the record industry is able to recognize the need
to finally enter the 21st century, and they've demonstrated many times how
good they are at finding ways to avoid doing that.


On Tue, Feb 06, 2007 at 09:49:36PM -0500, kaye zimpher wrote:
> Well neither do the itunes scripts. I bought the scripts and I still do not 
> shop at the store because the key stroke needed to click the "buy" button 
> does not work, so just go with anapod.