NBC/Universal twisting arms at Apple
31 08 2007NBC’s a-fussin’ and a-feudin’ with Apple over it’s iTunes offerings:
The companies are expected to continue negotiations. But NBC Universal’s hardball tactics, reported Friday in The New York Times, illustrates unrest among content providers concerning Apple’s pricing policies.
iTunes offers songs for download at 99 cents and video for $1.99. Media companies want more say in pricing and, in NBC Universal’s case, is anxious to offer different packages by bundling programs together at different prices.
This is just the latest in a string of these incidents between content providers and Apple, and frankly I’m less and less sympathetic to the former. The last line of the article:
NBC Universal also wants iTunes to stiffen anti-piracy provisions so computer users would not have easy access to illegal downloads.
What the hell does that mean? What does iTunes have to do with having access to any other content?
Are they saying that iTunes shouldn’t play media that wasn’t purchased from it’s store? That’s not very smart, but it’s not as crazy as the first possibility that came to mind. The point here is that people already have easy access to dubious media, and many of those people do not currently and never will run iTunes for anything. It’s not even part of the equation.
Content providers need to take a deep breath and really think this through. Going after the people who are doing everything right doesn’t help anyone. When I pay for the privilege of downloading a TV show I shouldn’t have to worry about what it’s going to do to my computer, not when I could just download it off of Bit Torrent and get both the show and the stress for free.
Demanding that Apple make my life more complicated for doing the right thing is just plain dumb. I hope, that more details will become available and it will all turn out to have been a misunderstanding.
