Increased DRM for iTunes?
p2pnet.net News:- If you think Apple’s consumer control C.R.A.P. is already bad, Hollywood wants to make it worse.
It wants more DRM (Digital Restrictions Management), demanding that Apple changes the way iTunes, its user-funded iPod front-end, handles full-length movies online.
“Amid slowing growth of DVD sales, the studios – Universal, 20th Century Fox, Paramount and Warner Bros – are keen to find new ways of delivering their content to consumers,” says The Financial Times., continuing, “They have been in talks with Apple Computer for several months about making their films available on its iTunes platform.”
And they want to achieve that by having Apple limit the number of devices that can use a movie downloaded from iTunes.
That would presumably mean to watch a movie you’d paid through the nose for, you’d have to have corporate consumer control DRM pre-installed on your computer so Hollywood can keep a beady eye on you.
At the moment, iTunes content can be uploaded to any number of iPods and users can copy music by synching their units with friends’ computers. But limiting the number of video iPods used by a single computer to four or five, “will, they believe, deter professional content pirates,” says the FT, going on:
“Although no such system is in place for music downloads, Hollywood is pressing Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, to make changes. At risk, the studios say, are their investments in feature film production. With the average cost of a studio blockbuster approaching $100m – far more than the cost of an album – the studios say they have more to lose than music companies.”
Of the Big Six studios, Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney, only Disney – with Apple’s Steve Jobs now among the company’s movers and shakers – has a deal with Apple in place.
“Apple, meanwhile, needs the studios on board because a broader range of content on iTunes will help it sell more video iPods and, eventually, more iTV devices, which the group is set to launch next year,” says the story, adding the situation is further complicated by the fact major retailers, with Target and Wal-Mart to the fore, see digital distribution as a direct threat to DVD sales.
But, “with Christmas approaching and the biggest film of the year – Disney’s film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest – now available on DVD, the rancour appears to have subsided,” adds The Financial Times.
Also See:
consumer control C.R.A.P. – Apple and its C.R.A.P., March 4, 2006
The Financial Times – AHollywood hopes to weather piracy with a bite of the Apple, November 29, 2006
direct threat – Disney, Target row, November 20, 2006
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December 1st, 2006 at 3:13 pm
Deter professional content pirates? No chance. It will be cracked with days, of course, and they know it. What they mean is: deter casual sharers, or to put it another way, rack up extra sales for the technically illiterate.
December 1st, 2006 at 10:34 pm
…since I don’t purchase movies from iTunes, and that I don’t have more than one iPod.
December 1st, 2006 at 11:06 pm
“…the average cost of a studio blockbuster [is] approaching $100m…”
Gee, where do you think the root of the problem lies…?