Europeans vs I-Tunes monopoly

[Patrick]

Glad to see someone actually has balls. Any chance of something similar like this in North America?:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/internet/0 ... index.html

[Tsuroerusu]

Any chance of something similar like this in North America?

I'm sorry about saying this, but in a country where you, as a big giant company or entity of some sort, can just pay the politicians to get your own laws passed, I seriously doubt it.

[Vogateer]

Wow, another loverly suggestion that the U.S. is merely a plutocracy, haven't heard something like that in at least two days.

[shopRatt]

Any chance of something similar like this in North America?:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/internet/0 ... index.html

Not a chance in hell Pat, I'm afraid to say. Lots of freedom here no balls

Our govt. can be baught and sold just like any company and it is really depressing sometimes. You know me, I'm not one of these extreme left - long haired dudes. But sometimes these types of things needs to be settled in court.

[Vogateer]

Bad as Apple may be, at least they have some semblance of concern about the user's experience. Honestly, looking at the ridiculous lengths Microsoft is going with DRM and cryptography of DRMed content in Vista, if you had to pick between the two, whom would you rather have controlling the music distribution? Things could be a lot worse.

A large part of this is the music companys' fault. So eager were they for DRM distributed content, that any concern about the repercussions of their arrangement with Apple were thrown to the wayside. They were free to make arrangement with other stores, if they wanted, but their insistence on DRM and the success of the iPod have made Apple far more powerful than music companies ever expected. The thing that worries me is that Vista will no doubt push a music store through their OS sometime soon, and given people's refusal to install new software on their computer, Microsoft will be in a position to leverage their monopoly, give music companies what they want, and I dread the day we see them be successful in that venture.

[Patrick]

Our govt. can be baught and sold just like any company and it is really depressing sometimes. You know me, I'm not one of these extreme left - long haired dudes. But sometimes these types of things needs to be settled in court.

As some who is more to the right I wholeheartedly agree. All politicians can be bought! We really need to clean house in this country and forbid this nonsense. BOTH parties are guilty. It's truly disgusting.

[Vogateer]

Money talks. Haven't really seen a place where this isn't the case. The preposterous interpretation of the 14th amendment led to a lot of the problems we have with money flowing into campaign war chests. Ours is a pretty severe case, but it's hardly as though other countries are immune to it's effect. One of the reasons they have more luck going after Apple in Europe is that it's an American company. Much easier to go after foreign competition.

The fact that the broadcast flag hasn't been passed says something, though. The EFF can't be putting as much money towards their cause as the TV industries, but EFF has managed to block it. I tire of the oversimplification of suggesting that politician's simply roll over first chance they get. It really only carries so far, and all the money you can throw at a politician doesn't mean much if it won't help him get reelected.

[shopRatt]

Our govt. can be baught and sold just like any company and it is really depressing sometimes. You know me, I'm not one of these extreme left - long haired dudes. But sometimes these types of things needs to be settled in court.

As some who is more to the right I wholeheartedly agree. All politicians can be bought! We really need to clean house in this country and forbid this nonsense. BOTH parties are guilty. It's truly disgusting.

// <- - leans to the right as well. Agreed. house-cleaning is in order on BOTH sides.

[Vogateer]

What are people going to do? Vote Independent? Vote Libertarian? Hardly.

The only success we have at keeping spending down is when either both houses of Congress are controlled by the competing parties, or when the Presidency and Congress are controlled by competing parties. Having one party in power just creates a pork-barrel spending spree.

The Republicans had an interesting strategy, they planned to create political machines to consolidate power, using pork-barrel spending to get entrenched in their seats, hoping to be immune from the usual backlash they get whenever they cut spending in some area. The first part of the plan worked. They figured they usually get one shot every 10 years at reforming some major social spending program. The '90s gave us Welfare reform, they were hoping the 00's would give us Social Security reform. We all remember how that went. Now they're stuck without a reformed social spending program, and still sticking to the pork-barrel spending that entrenched them in their seats in the first place. Were it not for such an unpopular war, they'd probably still be in power.

[snarkout]

This is, frankly, stupid. Lock-in != monopoly.

[Vogateer]

I'm in agreement. The music companies got themselves into this mess, they can figure out a way to bail themselves out, without the government basically doing that for them.

[chuck]

What are people going to do? Vote Independent? Vote Libertarian? Hardly.

So you and everyone else just says 'They can't win so I won't even try' and that just perpetuates the truth of your statement. The independent/libertarian/other candidate can succeed simply by pulling votes away from 'the majors' and building momentum.

And that momentum will never get started as the voters as a whole will not make a choice as they believe that it's not their incumbent that is causing the problems.

[Vogateer]

I do vote Libertarian often. That question was meant to be a bit of a jab at people unwilling to change the way they vote in order to change the way the nation is governed. Obviously I didn't get across the "tone" of that question, but completely agree with you, Chuck.

I don't believe there's such a thing as "spoiler" candidates. If some represents my beliefs better, I vote for them. The candidate from one of the two bigger parties either adjusts his views to cater to people attracted to another party, or loses those votes.