Hillary Rosen announces to the world that she is at best an idiot, at worst, a hypocrite. Yes. This is that Hillary Rosen.
[Via Boing Boing]
Hillary Rosen: Idiot
May 9, 2005 by
Wise Up, Suckers
Hillary Rosen announces to the world that she is at best an idiot, at worst, a hypocrite. Yes. This is that Hillary Rosen.
[Via Boing Boing]
Copyright © 2024 David Gulbransen · All Rights Reserved
Yes, the entertainment industry has said and done some unreasonable things to try and catch up with technology. But as both a consumer and artist, I prefer the idea of low-cost downloads to having artists get nada for their work.
And she does have a point she’s making on behalf of her constituents (not just record companies, but artists too). The message is worthy even if the messenger isn’t.
After all, if the majority owns an iPod, and iPod makes it difficult to play anything except Apple content, you (either an indie artist or a conglomerate) would feel pressured to broker a deal with Apple in order to get your music distributed and made available to your audience. If Apple has enough clout, they can force their partners to deal exclusively with them.
(It’s ironic considering how hard it has been, traditionally for the Mac faithful to get their favorite programs – how many people, for that purpose alone, decide to get a PC rather than a Mac? In the same sort of scenario, wouldn’t a person without unlimited income or time go for an iTunes account and ignore the other options for downloading music?)
I agree that there is a lot of hypocrisy in the record business, but this is also the industry that’s had its hands tied in the past by greedy middlemen – “promoters” who hold up record companies for money, in order to get singles played at radio stations. (Frederic Dannen’s book “Hit Men” is eye-opening about this new style payola. A friend’s father, a now retired exec who had worked for Elektra, was interviewed for the book, and agreed that it was on the ball.) They’re not just terrified of losing control to the audience, but also losing more control to outsiders.
It doesn’t make the DMCA right, or excuse their shoddy behavior towards artists, but considering that the big money in the movie industry often comes from distribution, rather than development or production, she may have a point about the ‘pod.
The problem with that is that it’s not hard to play other formats of music on the iPod–in fact, it’s dead simple. I do it all the time, with MP3s I ripped from my personal CD collection.
What Rosen is asking Apple to do is to make *their* format easier to play on *other* people’s players. And frankly, what is the motivation for Apple to do that?!
Apple pays musicians for their music. You can play other formats on the iPod. Hillary is just upset because Apple is protecting their own content with a proprietary scheme–just like record companies! That’s where the irony comes into play.