mark’lectic

Unlocked iPhone Available to Entire EU

There have been a number of US sites reporting that when the iPhone goes on sale in France, it’ll be available in both locked-to-Orange and unlocked versions.

The unlocked version will apparently cost more than the locked version.

This means two things:

1) The phone is being subsidised, like most phone. It’s just not as transparent. 2) Anyone in the EU will be able to buy an unlocked iPhone.

The EU is a single market. This means anyone can go to France, buy an unlocked iPhone, and take it back to their own EU country and Apple can’t stop them (well, legally. They might try as they do with the iTunes Store).

I expect a lot of people to buy unlocked iPhones in France and ship them to other EU countries.

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Is George W. Bush a Copyright Criminal?

In a Washington Post article dated Friday, December 16, 2005, available online at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/15/AR2005121502378.html, President Bush is asked about the music on his iPod.

President Bush is quoted as saying, in part, that one of the artists on his iPod is The Beatles.

As you may know, none of The Beatles songs are available on the iTunes Store or on any other online music store. The only way to get them onto an iPod is to copy them from a Beatles CD.

Jennifer Pariser, Sony BMG’s the head of litigation, recently testified, when asked if it was “okay if a consumer makes just one copy of a track they’ve legally purchased. She said no — that’s “a nice way of saying, ’steals just one copy.’”

So, it seems the position of Sony BMG is that George W. Bush is a thief. I wonder when they’ll file the lawsuit.

Posted in Law, Media | No Comments »

iTunes UK TV Shows. Is Apple Kidding?

The Apple UK iTunes Store started offering television shows and boy, what a rip-off. First, the price is too high. Second, you get lower quality, third, it’s locked to your Apple hardware.

In the US. The price for series 1 of Lost is $34.99. That’s about £18 including tax at the current exchange rate. So what is Apple charging for the same thing in the UK? £34.99. That’s about $70. Nice profit margin for someone, but I’m sure not going to pay it.

Even leaving out the UK/US price comparison, you can buy the series one DVD box set from Amazon UK for £32.97. That’s the total price with free shipping and look at what you get for money:

• A higher resolution picture (720×576 for PAL vs. 640×480 for iTunes video)
• Dolby Digital 5.1
• Lost Flashbacks All New Unaired Flashbacks
• Welcome To Oahu The Making Of The Pilot Behind The Scenes Featurette
• The Genesis Of Lost
• The Art Of Matthew Fox
• Audio Commentaries
• Before They Were Lost Audition Tapes And Personal Stories From The Cast
• Deleted Scenes

So, not only is it slightly over two pounds cheaper, but you get 5.1 audio, a higher resolution and a bunch of extra scenes and content.

But surely you get something unique in the iTunes version right? Yup, here’s what:

• Available to watch within a few hours
• Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) to prevent you from playing back your purchase on anything other than Apple’s devices

So why in the world would I buy the iTunes version when I can have the DVD version for the same price? And if I want to watch it on my iPod or AppleTV, there’s always Handbrake.

Posted in Media, Tech | No Comments »

Google Offers Full Refunds, Customers Screwed Slightly Less

Today Google Video offered a full refund after initially announcing that customers would only get a Google Checkout credit. According to the story on Ars Technica, “Google has seen the error of its ways and is effectively doubling refunds for customers of its video store. The company also said it would grant a stay of execution to its DRM services, meaning customers can watch videos from the store for a little longer.”

Of course, after the limited time is up, people’s video screens will still go dark. I would guess that most people who bought the videos Google sold actually wanted to purchase them.

After all, almost every movie you can buy is also available for rental. Yet, people continue to buy copies of movies all the time. Even though Google is giving people their money back, they’ve still taken away something the customers thought was theirs to keep.

If Disney showed up on your doorstep with a check and wanted all of their animated films back, would you hand them over? How would you explain that to your kids? And, would you ever buy a Disney movie again?

Sometimes I rant about the content industry and how people should stop them from trying to control every use of their media. And sometimes I think all I need to do is wait and they’ll do something so stupid that they’ll end up shooting themselves in the foot. This isn’t quite the spark that touches off the revolution, but if it does happen it’ll look something like what Google has done this week.

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Google Gets Bored Selling Videos, Customers screwed

Google launched Google Videos a year ago and started selling TV episodes and other videos. It was never very popular and, even then, there were complaints about Google’s use of Digital Restrictions Management technologies applied to the videos you bought.

Well now it seems Google has become bored with being in the online video downloads business and has decided to shutdown. Fine, they have every right to shut down an unpopular service.

However, what I’m sure nobody realized when they bought a video from Google is that, now that Google is going to stop “selling” videos, all of the videos that they already own will stop working.

Google’s letter to customers says: “After August 15, 2007, you will no longer be able to view your purchased or rented videos.”

Now, I may be old fashioned, but when I purchase something, I usually expect to have the use of it until I either sell it, give it away. I’m sure Google wrote a EULA for their video sales that claims to give them the right to do this, but I’d love to see them challenged in court over this.

Imagine if, whenever Ford discontinued a car model, everyone who owns that model got a letter telling them their car will no longer start after August 15.

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