Not Everything Is a Consumer “Right”

So Thon (for he is the mighty ham­mer) fucks up iPod good­ness for the rest of his frost­bit­ten col­leagues in the north of north­wards. He’s going to get a lot of thanks from the pen­guins and yaks. Because wal­ruses are big fans of the Zune (some have tatoos)and they are a key demo­graphic for some­thing or other… no, ran out of bile, what­ever, some­thing, some­thing, fuck off.

If Norway has it’s way, Microsoft will have trou­ble with the Zune store as it will also need to be cross plat­form. As it cur­rently stands, the Zune store is even more lim­ited than the iTunes Music Store.

I don’t really under­stand what Norway is try­ing to accom­plish here. Seems like a bunch of BS to me.

Leaving aside that Apple isn’t requir­ing DRM in the iTMS, the music com­pa­nies are…

Dude, he lives in the coun­try that cre­ated LUTEFISK.

with that in mind, any­thing Norwegians do makes sense.

I sort of feel sorry for him, actu­ally. His hands are tied: he can­not directly sue the labels who are ulti­mately respon­si­ble for the DRM mess, but he’s oblig­ated by job title to sue some­body. Suing Apple makes sense if Apple does the log­i­cal thing and pulls out of Norway. Apple might then have legit­i­mate grounds to sue the labels for busi­ness inter­fer­ence, espe­cially if Amazon et al. are allowed to con­tinue to sell unfet­tered in Norway.

There are some ugly ques­tions that a law­suit raises that the labels have been try­ing to ignore. Does Norway have enough pur­chas­ing power to make up for the “losses” that they are sure they will incur from DRM-less media? How about all of Europe if the EUC becomes involved? Are they will­ing to trade one jug­ger­naut (Apple) for another (Amazon)? What if European artists rebel and sign onto iTunes as inde­pen­dents? If the labels give Apple dis­pen­sa­tion to sell unfet­tered in Norway, will other nations real­ize that they can black­mail their way into a DRM-free service?

Fun times, indeed.

I sug­gest you stick to rant­ing about American issues. In order for con­sumer pro­tec­tion leg­is­la­tion to do its thing and actu­ally be leg­is­la­tion that pro­tects con­sumers, it must be restric­tive to busi­ness. Our laws man­date that all sales are final and bind­ing and result in a trans­fer of own­er­ship. I have bought a song and obtained a copy­right licence for it. Whether Apple applied copy pro­tec­tion to it vol­un­tar­ily or not, they have no busi­ness restrict­ing what I do to it after the sale, as long as I use it per­son­ally. Apple chose to do busi­ness and make money in our coun­tries, and are thus sub­ject to our laws.

Oh, and fuck you too!

Oh look, a fuck­ing whiny norski is again show­ing they don’t know what the fuck is going on.

Tell me, what part of: “The deci­sion to require DRM on some songs is not Apple’s, you fuck­ing igno­ra­mus” is unclear to you?

Apple has been try­ing for some time now, as shown by iTunes Plus, to dump DRM. The record com­pa­nies won’t let them.

Exactly how is Apple sup­posed to uni­lat­er­ally abro­gate a con­tract with­out los­ing all the songs on iTMS and pay­ing an ass­load of money?

Is every­one in Norway as fuck­ing igno­rant as you, or are you just the only vil­lage idiot with an inter­net connection?

@Dan Villiom Podlaski Christiansen: Then your laws, you fuck­wit, are broken.

Oh, and since appar­ently the whiny twats in the EU need a reminder, here are Steve’s words on the subject:

Much of the con­cern over DRM sys­tems has arisen in European coun­tries. Perhaps those unhappy with the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion should redi­rect their ener­gies towards per­suad­ing the music com­pa­nies to sell their music DRM-free. For Europeans, two and a half of the big four music com­pa­nies are located right in their back­yard. The largest, Universal, is 100% owned by Vivendi, a French com­pany. EMI is a British com­pany, and Sony BMG is 50% owned by Bertelsmann, a German com­pany. Convincing them to license their music to Apple and oth­ers DRM-free will cre­ate a truly inter­op­er­a­ble music mar­ket­place. Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly.

@The Angry Drunk:

Oh now you want these fuck­sticks to ana­lyze the prob­lem and try to fix the root cause? What next, you’re trad­ing in your car for a fly­ing ponycorn?

Not every­one in Norway is that fuck­ing igno­rant, but we do have more than our share of enti­tle­tards, I’m afraid.

Oh, and go angry, loud­mouthed guys! Always enter­tain­ing, and mostly spot on.

I hate to say it but: “Sovereign nation, they make the laws.”

I dis­agree with the way that Norway is going after Apple (espe­cially since every­one but EMI is refus­ing DRM-free tracks on iTunes while allow­ing them for any other online retailer — most likely an effect of an indus­try in col­lu­sion to kill Apple’s online stran­gle­hold and rein­force their own power, but I digress some­what and greatly over-extend this paren­the­sis) but (takes breath) they can make any damn stu­pid laws they like and enforce them. That’s what being a sov­er­eign nation is all about.

Of course, the worst result for Norway’s peo­ple is if Apple just kill their iTunes Music Store. It seems the only remain­ing viable option, given that the reg­u­la­tors lack the tes­ti­cles to actu­ally hit the music com­pa­nies whose con­tracts with Apple are def­i­nitely within Norway’s legal sys­tem, and there­fore sub­ject to Norway’s reg­u­la­tion. No, much sim­pler to go after Apple who are bound by the laws of Norway and the con­tracts they sign to get the business.

I read some guy on ArsTechnica a while back who vocif­er­ously main­tained that Apple are in the wrong for sign­ing the con­tracts. For any­one who argues that — if the con­tracts are legal to start with, the nation in ques­tion is sim­i­larly bound to hon­our them and not change the sys­tem or object after the fact. If the con­tracts were never legal to start with, then there’s no fault and the nation in ques­tion will object to (and assist in the defence of) any penalty being attempted by a party that con­sid­ers itself wronged.

But no, it’s so much sim­pler to put it all at Apple’s door. Damn those greedy Americans and all that! Why try for a real solu­tion when there’s polit­i­cal mileage (or kilo­me­treage) to be made from hit­ting the obvi­ous parties?

(Full dis­clo­sure: I’m Australian and used the Mac since 1992. I try not to be a fan-boy and attempt to engage my brain on polit­i­cal issues.)

@John C. Welch: What makes our con­sumer leg­is­la­tion effec­tive is that it deals with rela­tion­ship between the seller and pur­chaser exclu­sively. That is, Apple is the store sell­ing these prod­ucts, and thus respon­si­ble for them. Apple can deal with its part­ners them­selves; they’re in a much bet­ter posi­tion to do that. Our laws con­sti­tute the frame within busi­nesses must oper­ate; claim­ing that you had no choice is irrel­e­vant in this regard. These laws work for every other area of busi­ness, and will work for this area too. The Consumer Ombudsman is tar­get­ing Apple as the most sig­nif­i­cant player. If nec­es­sary, other play­ers will be dealt with later.

You guys seem very happy to con­demn this as Anti-American behav­iour, yet you know absolutely noth­ing about the coun­tries you are charg­ing of it. If you did, you would know that such a claim is ridicu­lous, and reveals that you haven’t looked into the issue beyond what you hear from American media. On the other hand, it never ceases to amaze when an American busi­ness try to do busi­ness in Europe just as they do in America, only to be sur­prised when their unrea­son­able or ille­gal behav­iour gets them into trouble.

Apart from the usual Scandinavian part­ners, Germany and France are also sup­port­ive of the Norwegian inquiries. Pulling out of those mar­kets would be down­right stupid…

@Dan Villiom Podlaski Christiansen: Bullshit.

This is just a politi­cian mak­ing polit­i­cal points by cater­ing to a bunch of whin­ing twats like you with an overblown sense of enti­tle­ment. Tell me, is your pre­cious defender of con­sumer jus­tice also attack­ing Microsoft because the Zune mar­ket­place is Zune only; or attack­ing Sony because PS3 discs don’t play in a Wii? Didn’t fuck­ing think so.

And cut the “oh, evil Americans are oppress­ing me” crap. Do a lit­tle more read­ing here and you’ll notice that I’m hardly a cheer­leader for this coun­try, or for unreg­u­lated mar­kets. What I do oppose, in every form, is the asi­nine notion that Apple (or any other com­pany) is required to make its offer­ings inter­op­er­a­ble with it’s com­peti­tors. If you don’t want to use an iPod, then fine buy your music from one of the nigh infi­nite alter­nate sources out there. In the mean­time, suck a dick.

@Dan Villiom Podlaski Christiansen:

Dude, the con­tract, implied or oth­er­wise makes no dif­fer­ence. They can scream and yell and sue Apple all they want, and it won’t mat­ter, because apple can’t change the con­tract uni­lat­er­ally. What they’re doing is the equiv­a­lent of demand­ing that an auto dealer sell all mod­els at the same price. The dealer can­not uni­lat­er­ally do that. They can only con­trol the items they have con­trol over. I fail to see why this very basic con­cept is impos­si­ble for you to understand.

Apple is not the entity requir­ing DRM in their store. In fact, where they can, the hap­pily sell DRM-free songs. But if their sup­plier, who actu­ally con­trols this sit­u­a­tion requires them to apply DRM, then Apple has no choice, bar­ring not doing busi­ness with that sup­plier anymore.

Going after Apple may be emo­tion­ally sat­is­fy­ing, but it has no chance of fix­ing the prob­lem, because Apple is not the cause here.

As far as the anti-american issue goes, um, read­ing skills? This has noth­ing to do with coun­try of ori­gin, and every­thing to do with stu­pid­ity. Bitching at Apple when you’re aware that Apple is not the source of the prob­lem is stu­pid. Just because an American is point­ing out that stu­pid­ity doesn’t make it not stu­pid. It just means you can’t be fuck­ing both­ered to do your own work.

It is the stu­pid­ity that is annoy­ing. The source has noth­ing to do with beyond the fact that peo­ple who eat lute­fisk should not be call­ing any­one names.

whis­tles a merry lit­tle iTune

I won­der if I should seek polit­i­cal asy­lum in Sweden. They have cheap smokes, cheap booze, cheap beer, cheap any­thing that is unhealthy, and the girls are almost as cute as here. I am rather sure the über­haubt­stürm­führer herr Ombudsmann Thon has had a con­stant erec­tion ever since he found out that he might make him­self inter­na­tion­ally known. Ohhhhhhh well. iPods with­out iTunes Music Store is really a party. I am old enough to remem­ber the times before it opened here, we actu­ally had to go to town to get our CDs. Wasn’t fun at all. All the pen­guins and wal­ruses tried to gnaw off our kneecaps, and if that didn’t kill us, it didn’t make us tougher either. Bloody bastardness.

@Dan Villiom Podlaski Christiansen: Uhm… Where the fuck did you see them con­demn­ing this as Anti-American behav­iour? Last time I checked, this was not Jack D. Ripper’s blog.

Hey, I just got told pen­guins come from the south pole, not the north pole (appar­ently it’s in antiar­tica) so, damn, I feel like a fool now. My cogent point just got under­mined by my igno­rance. Good job no-one else here made the same mis­take. You must all be right.

A few points:

1) There is no Zune mar­ket­place in Scandinavia. The other, smaller stores will likely be dealt with after Apple. 2) The ombuds­man is a civil ser­vant directly appointed by the min­is­ter. He is not a politi­cian, and not an elected offi­cial. If Norway is like Denmark in this area — gen­er­ally a rea­son­able assump­tion — only par­lia­men­tar­i­ans and local coun­cil mem­bers are elected. 3) Any con­tract is based on the law, and the law defines the premises of the con­tract. Apple can enter into a con­tract to break the law all they want; they’ll still be break­ing the law. Whomever Apple promised to not really sell music is irrel­e­vant. The music was sold, so Apple is bound by local laws. 4) In gen­eral, it is obvi­ous that you guys are com­pletely igno­rant about how the Scandinavian soci­eties are mod­elled. Even expert knowl­edge of American soci­ety is not suf­fi­cient to crit­i­cise European soci­eties; knowl­edge of what you 5) Encryption is not the only fac­tor pre­vent­ing inter­op­er­abil­ity between the Wii and the PS3. Encryption is the only fac­tor that pre­vents me from play­ing some of my music on my phone. (Which oth­er­wise sucks.) 6) Neither Norway nor Sweden have cheap smokes and booze. On the con­trary, actually.

This is about whether cer­tain behav­iour is legal and per­mis­si­ble in our mar­kets. You have no idea about the con­text, and say noth­ing which other equally unin­formed Americans haven’t already said. I was wrong to gen­er­alise this to say­ing that Norway was anti-American, and I apol­o­gise for that. That being said, you guys seem unaware of the fact that you know noth­ing what­so­ever about Scandinavia.

(Friday. One out of two. Sigh.)

@Dan Villiom Podlaski Christiansen:

A few points:

None of which will address the root cause of the prob­lem, because you don’t care, as long as you get to rail against the evil amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tion keep­ing you from your right­ful music.

1) There is no Zune mar­ket­place in Scandinavia. The other, smaller stores will likely be dealt with after Apple.

Not if Apple has no con­tracts with music com­pa­nies. How well do you think iTunes will do sans content?

2) The ombuds­man is a civil ser­vant directly appointed by the min­is­ter. He is not a politi­cian, and not an elected offi­cial. If Norway is like Denmark in this area — gen­er­ally a rea­son­able assump­tion — only par­lia­men­tar­i­ans and local coun­cil mem­bers are elected.

A bureau­crat mak­ing a name for him­self with a bunch of PR based on com­plete igno­rance of real­ity. Wow, THERE’S a shock. Just like…well…the U.S. Except here, we try to avoid elec­tion­less power out­side of the judiciary.

3) Any con­tract is based on the law, and the law defines the premises of the con­tract. Apple can enter into a con­tract to break the law all they want; they’ll still be break­ing the law. Whomever Apple promised to not really sell music is irrel­e­vant. The music was sold, so Apple is bound by local laws.

So let me under­stand this. All con­tracts that you don’t like are ille­gal. And, accord­ing to you, nei­ther Apple, nor the European branches of the var­i­ous record com­pa­nies have no local lawyers, nor both­ered to look up local laws, and based every­thing off of the American bar?

Because that’s what you’re say­ing. That com­pa­nies with actual offices in the EU, and Norway, who employ nation­als of the var­i­ous EU/Scandanavian coun­tries, in fact, have no idea of the local laws?

Does it maybe occur to you that pos­si­bly, your inter­pre­ta­tion of this is oh…i don’t know…fucking stu­pid? Because that’s what I’m see­ing, is a com­plete lack of aware­ness of how multi­na­tional com­pa­nies work, com­bined with the idea that no one but you knows shit about Norway.

However, in a vain attempt to bring logic into this, what’s the dif­fer­ence between not being able to play a song from the iTMS on any device you want, and being able to put a Saab pis­ton into any car you want? In Norway, are car com­pa­nies required by law to have inter­change­able parts? Because that’s a direct anal­ogy. All parts in any indus­try must be effort­lessly inter­change­able. A song is just a part of the online music indus­try, and you’re demand­ing that they be made in a per­fectly inter­change­able man­ner. So can I buy a cheap-shit VW in Norway, and replace var­i­ous parts with high-end Saab parts, and they’ll all fit and work per­fectly? There’s no tech­ni­cal rea­son for that not being allowed.

Somehow I doubt I can do that.

4) In gen­eral, it is obvi­ous that you guys are com­pletely igno­rant about how the Scandinavian soci­eties are mod­elled. Even expert knowl­edge of American soci­ety is not suf­fi­cient to crit­i­cise European soci­eties; knowl­edge of what you

I know how to fin­ish a sen­tence. As well, your assump­tion that all amer­i­cans know noth­ing about any coun­try other than their own shows your rather astound­ing igno­rance of the breadth and depth of peo­ple in this coun­try. Here’s a hint…Fox News is not all you need to watch. Maybe you should spend some time learn­ing about Americans before you decide what we do and do not know. It cer­tainly beats that blind for­tune teller who’s sup­ply­ing your infor­ma­tion at the moment.

5) ) Encryption is not the only fac­tor pre­vent­ing inter­op­er­abil­ity between the Wii and the PS3. Encryption is the only fac­tor that pre­vents me from play­ing some of my music on my phone. (Which oth­er­wise sucks.)

Well, there’s a sig­nif­i­cant hard­ware dif­fer­ence between a Zune and an iPod and a Sansa, even though they all do the same thing. Why do you allow Nintendo and Sony to use incom­pat­i­ble disk for­mats and APIs. there’s no rea­son why you can’t play the same game on both, in fact, the pres­ence of mul­ti­plat­form games shows there is no tech­ni­cal rea­son why this can’t happen.

As well, you do keep ignor­ing the fact that Apple is try­ing to get rid of DRM, but the record com­pa­nies won’t let them. Oh, wait, that’s one of those incon­ve­nient “facts” that you’re so stu­diously ignor­ing. You’ve made up your mind, why should facts be allowed to con­fuse you.

6) Neither Norway nor Sweden have cheap smokes and booze. On the con­trary, actually.

If you’re rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Norwegian men, I feel bad for the women, because it must cost them a for­tune to get blasted enough to where you’re not an igno­rant, self-important douchebag.

This is about whether cer­tain behav­iour is legal and per­mis­si­ble in our mar­kets. You have no idea about the con­text, and say noth­ing which other equally unin­formed Americans haven’t already said. I was wrong to gen­er­alise this to say­ing that Norway was anti-American, and I apol­o­gise for that. That being said, you guys seem unaware of the fact that you know noth­ing what­so­ever about Scandinavia.

No, we keep point­ing out that Apple is not the root cause of this prob­lem, and you keep ignor­ing that because it’s incon­ve­nient for your worldview.

And your igno­rance of the USA appears to be far greater than your per­ceived, (and incor­rect) opin­ion of our igno­rance of Norway. (Scandinavia is a region, not a coun­try. While Finland, Norway, and Sweden share a great deal of com­mon his­tory, they are not in fact the same place. Since we’re talk­ing about the actions of a minor unelected pub­lic offi­cial in one coun­try, let’s not drag the other two into it.)

Once again, John man­ages to make my point even bet­ter than I can.

Then again, I’m a bor­der­line socio­pathic alco­holic, so what’re you gonna do.

The thing is, over the course of the last few days; our buddy Dan has only man­aged to put forth one argu­ment. Simply put that argu­ment is, “Norwegian law says…”

And right there is where I cease to give a crap. See; I really don’t care what the law says. Sometime laws are wrong. To take this to the hyper­bolic extreme, in Saudi Arabia, female rape vic­tims are con­sid­ered adul­ter­ers, and by Saudi law are pun­ished by flog­ging. This is the law, it’s also wrong. To show I’m a standup guy and bash on good old America for a bit; there are many states here with laws that state that love between two peo­ple of the same bio­log­i­cal sex is ille­gal. That’s wrong too.

All ‘m say­ing, all I’ve ever said is: no one, whether they be in Norway, America, or the Land of fuck­ing Oz, has a right to per­fect inter­op­er­abil­ity. If you don’t like Apple’s hor­rid monop­oly on the iTunes Music Store; then I sug­gest that you check out Amazon, or eMu­sic, or (heav­ens for­bid) your local CD shop. You will be amazed that all of these sources work per­fectly on the “closed” iPod platform.

@Dan

The cig­gies in Sweden are cheap com­pared to Norway… That was my point.