Always Helping Themselves
You have to love the RIAA: as reported by TechDirt, it seems that they want to keep the wholesale prices that iTunes pays a secret:
In one of the recent lawsuits, UMG v. Lindor, where the defendant is challenging the damages amount, the RIAA is refusing to disclose the wholesale pricing details unless they can require Lindor's attorneys to keep the prices confidential. Her attorneys refuse to do so, on the grounds that the information really isn't confidential, and the only reason the RIAA is hoping to keep the prices quiet is to assist them in other lawsuits. Perhaps that would be lawsuits like the one they're facing from a bunch of musicians who feel that the labels are cheating them out of revenues owed from digital downloads.
At least it's clear who all the lies and DRM are for; it's certainly not the artists. Which makes the crap being pulled by Microsoft with the Zune and in Vista even more infuriating.
Comments
Speaking of Zune .....
[Tom Sattler] January 3, 2007 22:28:12.880
Speaking of Zune, I've noticed something very interesting about that little product. Wherever you see a display for it, and wherever you see an advertisement for it, the Microsoft name is nowhere to be found. I was amazed when I first noticed this, walking past J&R downtown NYC a couple weeks ago, but you'd think this product came out of Zune Inc. or some such. Microsoft does not put its name anywhere, which is exactly the opposite from what they do with software. Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Project, Microsoft Money, Microsoft This, Microsoft That, etc etc etc. Microsoft obviously did this for a reason. It wasn't just an oversight on their part; there had to be a reason. And the reason can only be that their market research, or focus groups, or whatever, told them that their target market doesn't like the company, so you'd better get your name off it or it won't sell. The extension of this logic, of course, is that they ought to go back to that market research and figure out why they are so disliked, and fix it fast. The main story here is a pretty good starting indication as to why.