Congress Holds Hearings on Digital Music
April 8th, 2005 | Published in Music, Politics, Technology | 3 Comments
Congress Holds Hearings on Digital Music
A U.S. House subcommittee on intellectual property has begun hearings to consider whether Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL – news) should be forced to make its digital music products work on digital music players provided by other vendors, such as Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT – news).
Spearheaded by Congressman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the subcommittee is investigating whether the government should mandate digital music compatibility.
Oh brother. It’s their company, and they should not have be made to work with other products. And yes, I believe it works the same way with Microsoft and other companies. Apple lets you listen to music not bought from iTunes on the iPod. If other companies can figure out how to support Apple’s music (or if they pay Apple a bunch to license it), then great. But the government has bigger things to worry about other than if iTunes music plays on other players.
Apple did a good job with the music industry. Don’t punish them for doing well.
April 14th, 2005 at 10:08 am (#)
I detect a subtle bias… :-)
April 14th, 2005 at 10:11 am (#)
Bias?!? I assure you that you are reading a 100% unbiased blog………. :)
April 27th, 2005 at 12:43 pm (#)
No greater thing can be said today and be held applicable more generally than that government has “bigger things to worry about”. Okay, that’s overstating it a little; but I’m quite beyond mortified at just how much of our social resources—if even government can still be said to be such—are poured into so much of so little consequence. I suppose it’s left to us, to me, to do something about it; and I can’t claim to have been anything but lazy about it so far. Bitching hasn’t seemed to work.