CE-Oh no he didn't! Part XXI : Gates tells consumers to ditch DRMed tunes, buy CDs
By Cyrus Farivar 
posted December 14th 2006 9:09PM
posted December 14th 2006 9:09PM
For our latest episode of CE-Oh No He Didn't, we turn to a perennial favorite: Bill Gates. At a recent blogger event (read: junket) up in Redmond, Gates apparently told the audience that DRM has "huge problems" (despite the fact that his company is one of its biggest proponents). Bill's a smart guy and his belief in DRM's suckiness isn't all that shocking, but even we were taken aback when he suggested picking up a freshly wrapped compact disc instead of pointing your interests towards his own company's music store, or in his words: "People should just buy a CD and rip it. You are legal then." Say, doesn't the RIAA seem to disagree with Mr. Gates' assessment, given that it still views ripping CDs has being sorta, um, illegal? And doesn't Microsoft go out of its way to break precedent by ponying up cash on Zune sales to RIAA cartel commander Universal Music? We realize there's only so much dogfooding one can do before going off the deep end, and we don't necessarily expect Bill to agree with every decision Microsoft makes. But what gets us here is that this is such a subtle and tacit admission of defeat at the hands of the record industry. The man DOES carry a Zune, and the man does actually listen to music on it, but maybe he doesn't realize that Microsoft could have held the power to strike a blow in the RIAA's armor and change things for the better for consumers -- Zune carrying consumers, like even he.
No DRM suggests a revaluation of patent and copyright law. Its a box both Gates and Jobs have to live in.
I admire Gates for what he had to say. But he has to walk carefully as no one wants to open Pandora's box with the morons we have in congress.
He probably had a bunch of itunes and realized they wouldn't play on his new zune...
Wake up people: if HIS on-line music store was number one do you think he'd be saying this? He didn't get to own a monopoly by loving consideration for suckers like us.
Once a slime-ball always a slime-ball.
keep smiling
waddo
DRM doesn't do you any good if your primary business is hardware and software rather than content. MSoft and Apple only kowtow to the RIAA because it isn't possible to reason with them.
It is actually true that for a consumer who's willing to do it (and wants the whole album), buying a CD and ripping it is the best digital purchase you can make: you get a perfect, un-DRM'd digital copy, in any codec you like. And, yes, it's legal to rip a CD you've purchased- it's what you do with the files afterwards that could be hot water.
Bill isn't admitting anything. He knows Apple's hold is tightly connected to iTunes. The Zune store sucks. So, you make the consumer think that buying CDs is the best way to get your music, then it makes the iPod and Zune on the same level in his eyes. THis is about his Zune, not his mistakes (well, the Zune...)
I think anyone serious about music would never buy highly compressed music from the itunes or zune store. Way too many limitations from drm. Buy a cd rip it the way you please, share it, sell it used. Do what you want with it. His comments are not about taking down the itunes store or putting zune on the same level as the ipod. This is purely a pragmatic statement. Online music stores are for better or for worse part of the DAP landscape. Do you really think that Apple is making a killing on the itunes music store, especially after they have to renegotiate with labels in the future?
Each to his own, however if Steve Jobs buys all of his music via the itunes store, he must have bad hearing and not appreciate how music is mixed and was intended to sound. Of course, if he sits around listening to his "audiophile" iFi then it doesn't matter.
This isn't about vision... Its about Zune.
Microsoft is promoting the sharing of music...
Gates saying this and getting consumer buy in makes Microsoft look good.
Of course no end user wants DRM.
So...
Saying this makes Microsoft look progressive...
Additionally, if this catches on .. it kills iTunes.
Bedammit
Hold on - Microsoft is NOT the biggest 'proponent' of DRM.
They offer DRM because the entertainment industry won't even talk to them if they don't have it. If the entertainment industry turned around tomorrow and said 'Our bad - DRM sucks - let's pretend we never brought it up' and removed that requirement from their contracts, I don't think Microsoft would start trying to get consumers to buy DRM.
Now, Microsoft does make a DRM product - why shouldn't they - and they do promote it - it IS one of their products, but that's hardly the same as saying they're promoting DRM as a concept, just their particular implementation of it.
You can argue that Microsoft shouldn't be helping the music industry, and I'd be inclined to agree - but hell, that's the exact same position Apple is in too - and if you say no - then you don't get to sell music.
I saw the zune the other day at target and then again at office max. I was the only one in the whole store looking at it. It's a giant piece of junk. I'm thinking of building a house out of those bricks. They need to do a revision. Maybe then it might grab my interest. MS doesn't have their finger on the pulse of what people really want. They just want to be considered. Similare to softdrink companies creating a crap product just to be in the game and take some market share. If Pepsi came out with a blueberry soda tomorrow Coke would follow within weeks. Microsoft is about 5 years behind the iPod fighting for table scraps with creative and sandisk and everyone else. I bet they don't even make much of a profit or even care. They just want to pee in the well. If legitmate song sales go down so does Apples stock price. Which is where Mr Gate is headed with his comments.