Apple in talks to buy Universal Music

Seriously, is this a good or bad thing? Or will it just mean that all new iPods come loaded "Beautiful Day"?

We'll have to wait and see whos corporate theology infects the other.

scared of apple.

But Apple would have one ace in the hole that Microsoft didn't have - they control the hardware as well as the software environment. Presumably, a hardware-based security scheme would be harder to defeat.

that's the main reason I'm scared. apple sells computers and they're acquiring music to sell more computers. more than ever, music is going to be treated/seen/handled as mere added 'content'. I mean, at least with the music industry, the music itself is the product that's being sold.

I was thinking more along the lines of an internal security chip that would use something like asymmetric-key encryption to communicate with Apple's verification server. Hacking the firmware would be ineffective in this case, because you cannot spoof the verification system unless you know the private key, which is embedded in the chip.

If this comes to pass then there's be serious antitrust issues here; if your Universal MP3s will only play on an iPod, you can bet that someone will start legal action.

bigger crowd there, more techies (and I don't think custos posts)

This wouldn't have any effect on MP3s. MP3s would still be around and would still work the same way they do now (anyhow, Apple doesn't own the MP3 technology, so they couldn't legally mess with it). What this would be would be a new proprietary music distribution system that required Apple hardware to work. I don't think there would be any antitrust issues there. There are lots of proprietary networks that require dedicated hardware - e.g., cable tv.

Apple could stand to profit a great deal if they turned the Mac into the ultimate home multimedia platform - and access to the massive music libraries of Universal would go more than a little bit towards this end.

Man, the future is gonna be so WEIRD. (just finished reading about the 2003 IEEE mobile conference, whoo jeebus)

I can totally understand the degree to which people will not trust Microsoft.. but I'm far more frightened of the degree to which people will trust Apple...

just finished reading about the 2003 IEEE mobile conference, whoo jeebus

Oh yes? And what's up there?

Personally I think if Microsoft gets ahold of Universal then major-label music is going to die a slow, painful death as people hack their way around progressively more annoying DRM schemes and refuse to pay up for unusable hard copies and watermarked softcopies that 'can't be duplicated'. If Apple gets a hold of it, assuming their business model doesn't radically change, I think the music business might be on the way to a healthy transformation.

Microsoft is all about the status quo and preserving the PC Gillette model for revenues. Apple is becoming more and more about selling you a fantastic razor at a premium price and then giving away replacement blades (until new models make yours obsolete, and then you pay the premium price all over again). I really don't see why anybody thinks Steve Jobs would want to implement hardware DRM - Apple is in no position to make those sort of demands from the current market. It's not whether I 'trust' Apple or not - it's because of what (to me) seems like the only good business decision they can make.

Aw, you make it sound so bad.

Given recent signs of Apple business practices, I'm more worried about a clip on file sharing (even 'reasonable' sharing) if they have a say in it. But they don't want to look like the bad guy either.

As long as we're all allowed to record analog sound signals on our computers or at least (god forbid) be able to record onto blank cassettes again, i'm not gonna worry too much all of this.