Another Case Against the iPod

Conspicuously absent in my Anti-iPod post was the fact that if you get an iPod your two options for music are a) iTunes, b) ripping from CD, or c) Finding “other” ways to get music that isn’t DRMed. Luckily, that point was picked up well by Hilary Rosen. (Yes, the Hilary Rosen of the RIAA)

The problem is that the iPod only works with either songs that you buy from the on-line Apple iTunes store or songs that you rip from your own CD’s. But those other music sites have lots of music that you can’t get at the iTunes store. So, if you have an iPod, you are out of luck. If you are really a geek, you can figure out how to strip the songs you might have bought from another on-line store of all identifying information so that they will go into the iPod. But then you have also degraded the sound quality. How cruel.

She comments that “most agree that [the iPod] is the best quality player” which is probably true. Most do agree that. But most are also stupid. Nevertheless, Richard Bradley (who?) has this to say:

As head of the RIAA, no one was more fervently anti-consumer than she. For years, Rosen defended the interests of the big record conglomerates, a group of companies which treated its customers with such contempt that millions of young people simply took to stealing music. Rosen doesn’t exactly have a lot of street cred with us consumers.

That paragraph is just one giant logical fallacy. As an alleged journalist, one would assume Mr. Bradley would know better than to assume that her argument is false because she doesn’t have “street cred.” His only argument is that the services she lists as alternatives are crappy. This may be true, they may not be as well put together as iTunes, but Ms. Rosen is correct that you can get music on them you can’t get on iTunes… so, crappy or not, they have a place in the market… and if you want to take full advantage of the offerings, you need something besides an iPod. Besides, the quality of the other services is just a strawman. The fact that iTunes’ DRM standard isn’t open is a problem, and it will only become a bigger problem as time goes on.