HBO and major movie studies like Warner Bros., Universal, and 20th Century Fox are coming to agreements that would allow Apple to properly implement iTunes Movies in the Cloud. Apple launched iTunes Music in the Cloud and TV in the Cloud last year as part of iCloud, but it took until this spring's new iPad event before they could announced Movies in the Cloud, even in the U.S.

Part of the reason was arduous negotiations with studios for the rights, including working around HBO's exclusive broadcast window. Without these deals in place, any already-purchased movie playing on HBO would suddenly not be available for re-download by users of Movies in the Cloud -- a frustrating user experience to say the least. According to the Wall Street Journal, however, those deals might be falling into place.

HBO isn't planning to give up its exclusive windows, for which it pays hundreds of millions of dollars a year, and which allow it to beam movies to its online service HBO Go as well as to its traditional TV channels. But HBO is relaxing terms to let users of iCloud and other services send movies they already own to other devices during those windows, an HBO spokesman said.

HBO agreed to loosen its arrangement with Warner Bros., which is working with iCloud, and also is in talks with Universal and Fox to do the same, the spokesman added.

Hopefully these will all be completed post haste and users will be able to access the movies they bought, on the devices they own, when and where they want to.

There's also a bunch of stuff in the WSJ article about the movie studio's Ultra Violet movie locker plans, if such things interest you.

Source: WSJ

If you're browsing Wikipedia, Reddit, or some other sites today and notice it's either blacked out or otherwise differently-functional, don't worry, they haven't gone down, they haven't been hacked, they're just protesting some wrong-headed U.S. legislation known as SOPA and PIPA (and I'd ask kindly they add ACTA to the list).

In a nutshell, Hollywood considers us all content thieves and their inexplicable hostility towards their own customers has caused them to expend tremendous time, effort, and money trying to get the U.S. government to cram through anti-consumer legislation that doesn't really fight illegal and unlicensed content distribution, but sure does trample individual rights, fair use provisions, and in general the whole concept of due process. To combat this, people who actually know what the internet is and how it works have applied equal and oppositional force back, up to an including today's black out. Fear of informed, engaged citizens has caused some politicians to rethink their support of these bills (though why they supported them to begin with should be a question asked pointedly and repeatedly come reelection time). But there's more work to be done.

Intellectual property violations are real. More than a decade ago I walked into a store in Hong Kong and saw a book I'd spent years researching, photographing, and writing photocopied and offered up for discount sale. I've been creating content most of my life. I understand it's value. It's Hollywood that doesn't -- that inflates and infantilizes it, that makes reasonable protection impossible in the face of their unreasonableness.

The defensiveness of movie makers and music labels, of myopic media throwbacks, of technophobes and all but disintermediated middlemen should never be put before the rights of the people who -- by the way -- are the very consumers who buy their products and provide them the very money they spend to lobby for such insane legislation to begin with.

Apple broke this conundrum years ago with iTunes: Make things easily available and price them fairly.

How about we make that the law?

Source: Wikipedia SOPA and PIPA resource page, Wikipedia ACTA page

Time Warner Cable issued a press release today announcing they have filed a request for declaratory judgement related to its recent TWCable TV app debacle, which forced them to remove a number of channels from the iPad app last week.

We’re at an impasse with a handful of network owners, and we need an impartial third party to referee the situation and confirm that our interpretation is correct. We thought the most efficient way to settle this would be to go before a judge and ask for a decision that, while noncombative, would establish the rights that we bargained for.

TWCable is taking a non-aggressive approach to the matter by requesting a judge step in and make a fair decision based on the facts. They believe they're well within their rights to stream content from Viacom (and other content owners) to an iPad located within the viewer's home under current agreements.

Viacom, on the other hand, isn't taking things lightly and has fired back with some pretty strong language, stating that Time Warner "blatantly grabbed the rights that their competitors have negotiated in good faith to obtain" and has now filed a lawsuit against the cable provider.

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out given the gaping differences between new media and old media these days, but we're hoping a judge declares Time Warner Cable is in the right, don't you? Sound off in the comments below!

[TWCableUntangled via Engadget]

Time Warner Cable has had to remove channels from its iPad application, TWCable TV with immediate effect. We already heard that this may be happening but Time Warner has now confirmed this with a company statement. The networks that seem to have taken umbrage with Time Warner are Discovery Communications, Fox Cable and Viacom. This means the next time you fire up your TWCable TV application on your iPad, you will be missing Animal Planet, Discovery, TLC, FX, National Geographic, BET, CMT, Comedy, MTV, Nickelodeon, Spike and VH1.

Unfortunately, the owners of those channels don't yet share our vision for making it easy for consumers to view the content they've already paid for on different screens within the home. We would rather use our technical resources to distribute the channels of programmers who agree that their content should be seen on any screen inside your home, while we pursue legal solutions that would let us continue deploying this Application.

Just as Amazon is facing resistance in letting customers stream their own music, this once again shows the wide gap between new technology and old media. Time Warner is clearly very unhappy about the situation and have set up a dedicated site to provide up to date information on any future developments.

[Thanks Anthony for the tip!]

[Time Warner Cable]

Proving once again that being a successful entertainer does not afford business insight any more than being a good businessman affords singing talent, Jon Bon Jovi has decided to hold Apple's Steve Jobs personally responsible for killing the music business:

Kids today have missed the whole experience of putting the headphones on, turning it up to 10, holding the jacket, closing their eyes and getting lost in an album; and the beauty of taking your allowance money and making a decision based on the jacket, not knowing what the record sounded like, and looking at a couple of still pictures and imagining it. Having laid the groundwork for finger-pointing, the aging rocker launched his final insult:

God, it was a magical, magical time. I hate to sound like an old man now, but I am, and you mark my words, in a generation from now people are going to say: ‘What happened?’. Steve Jobs is personally responsible for killing the music business.

Translation: @%$&%$! Apple no longer lets me hold 2 hit songs ransom with 10 filler tracks for $15!

[Sunday Times, thanks Anthony!]

Is Apple trying to block popular European streaming music service Spotify's US launch? In addition to labels being uncertain as to Spotify's business model, it's ability to monetize, and the future of ad-supported music, CNET is reporting:

In meetings in Los Angeles recently, Apple executives told their music industry counterparts that they had serious doubts about whether Spotify's business model could ever generate significant revenues or profits, according to two sources with knowledge of the discussions.

But Apple executives worried about the effects of a free music service might have on the rest of the market. They noted that it's tough to sell something that someone else is giving away, the sources said. One industry insider said it is only logical that if Spotify were allowed to launch a free-music service here, at a time when Nielsen recently reported that the growth of digital sales has flattened out, it could eat into the businesses of proven revenue-producers like Apple and Amazon.

iTunes is operated at low-margins for Apple as a way to encourage iPod and iPhone hardware purchases, but low-margins at iTunes like sales levels is still a large amount of money and Apple hasn't been this successful so far by leaving anything on the table.

Likewise, labels have been trying to hold Apple at bay by giving competitors like Amazon earlier access to DRM free music at much lower prices, and the entertainment industry in general has been denying them subscription TV, full participation in $0.99 TV show rentals, day-and-date movie availability, and other services consumers would probably enjoy having.

My base position is usually to suspect shenanigans on the part of the labels when these stories break, but should Apple be bearing the full brunt of these headlines this time?

[CNET via MacRumors]

Doesn't look like NBC will be joining iTunes' $0.99 TV show rental service anytime soon, as CEO Jeff Zucker thinks it's not enough to charge for 22-44 min. of... whatever soon to be cancelled sitcom they've shoved up against that inane reality show on that other network:

We do not think 99 cents is the right price point for our content. ... We thought it would devalue our content," Zucker said at a Goldman Sachs investor conference. He pointed to the fact NBC shows are already available for $1.99 for download on Apple's iTunes service.

But that's $1.99 to buy the show and watch it as many times as you want, not rent it and watch it once (or however many times you'd actually watch it during the 48 hour window). Want to watch it again next week, you gotta give NBC another $0.99, which brings them almost right back to that $1.99 and you still don't own it. Want to show it to a friend a month later, that's another $0.99, giving NBC almost $3, or more than they would have made for selling it to you.

But who am I to explain volume pricing, below impulse-buy thresholds, and -- you know -- math to one of the big media networks. After all, Zucker is the guy who yanked NBC off of iTunes entirely, only to come crawling back a short time later.

Fox, meanwhile, is keeping their options open, describing their involvement in the $0.99 program as a short term test.

Maybe someone should show them that Rolling Stone interview with Steve Jobs where he explained they aren't competing with other forms of purchase, they're competing with free.

[Reuters]

$0.99 TV show rentals are too cheap according the Warner CEO Barry Meyer, and would hurt full season TV show purchases.

Meyer said the deal was not a good value for the studio subsidiary of Time Warner Inc., which sells permanent downloads shows such as "Gossip Girl" on iTunes for $2.99 each.

I'm running out of quips to make about the oblivious myopia of old media. Seriously.

[AP]

Grooveshark's iPhone app has been pulled from the App Store following a complaint by Universal Music Group UK. According to their blog, Grooveshark is at a loss to explain it:

This comes as an absolute surprise to us, and we are not sleeping until we figure out exactly how to fix this—and get Grooveshark for iPhone back in the App Store. Above all, our biggest concern is damaging the service we provide to all of you guys—our loyal (awesome) users.

Mashable's Christina Warren has an idea, however:

Grooveshark is an easy lawsuit target because of its approach to music licensing and distribution. Unlike competing services like Rdio, MOG and Rhapsody, Grooveshark’s database of songs is uploaded and cataloged by end users. Grooveshark doesn’t police these uploads for copyright violations, instead relying on license holders to file takedown requests. To date, EMI is the only company that has entered into a licensing agreement with Grooveshark.

If you already have the app, you can continue using it. If not, you might just have to wait for Grooveshark to get their licenses in order with UMG and potentially the other 2 big record labels.

Apprently, new media is still a work in progress...

[Grooveshark via Mashable]

When Apple bought Lala, everyone anticipated that iTunes.com streaming music service was on the horizon, but now CNET hears it might be on hold as Apple works on... streaming video.

But eight months after the acquisition, Apple is telling executives at the four top labels that if Apple offers any cloud-music features within the next few months, they will likely be "modest in scope" and not include the kind of functionality that Apple outlined in meetings with the labels, such as storing users' music on its servers, sources told CNET. They added that Apple still hasn't negotiated the kind of licensing deals it would need to distribute music from the cloud.

Delays launching a cloud music service might disappoint some iTunes users, but if Apple is focusing resources on a cloud-video service it could be welcomed by those who have maxed out hard drives with films and TV shows. Sources at the major film studios have said this year that Apple plans to create "digital shelves" that enable iTunes users to store movies and other media on Apple's servers.

Add to all this that one of the Lala execs is rumored to have already moved on from Apple, and Internet/iTunes lead honcho Eddy Cue reportedly took a long time to even tell the Lala team what Apple wanted to do with them, and it seems like there's a lack of urgency around One Infinite Loop.

With competition from a Google Music service on the horizon, can Apple afford to take their time rolling out the iTunes Cloud? Are they far enough ahead in media that it doesn't matter? Could they actually be waiting for Google to negotiate cloud-streaming licenses with Big Media so Apple can simply adopt them as well and add to the existing iTunes service? Time -- and perhaps this fall's annual iPod touch/iTunes event -- will tell.

Are you getting impatient for your streams? Does it matter to you if Apple rolls out video from the clouds before music?

[CNET]

The New York Post is reporting that the Department of Justice is extending its anti-trust probe into Apple beyond music into all forms of media, including movies and TV shows.

"The [Justice Dept.] is doing outreach," said one Hollywood industry source. "You can't dictate terms to the industry. The Adobe thing is just inviting the wrath of everybody."

Interestingly, Hollywood thinks nothing about dictating terms to consumers or treating us like criminals, forcing DRM schemes on Apple and other companies -- schemes like HDCP and FairPlay that don't stop bootleggers but do stop regular consumers from fairly using the content they paid for. They've also recently gotten the government to help close the "analog recording loop", create unfair laws like the DMCA and pursue ridiculous international agreements to do likewise and worse.

Apple, like Microsoft and Google should be properly scrutinized for abusive and anti-competitive practices, absolutely. But what about Hollywood, who is scrutinizing them? The government is supposed to protect the interests of the people, not of the studios.

Ironically, Hollywood-mandated DRM is the only hard lock in iTunes.

If the probe into Apple is really about protecting consumers then great, protect us. If it's about helping friends in Hollywood remove Apple as a barrier towards further harming consumers with more DRM, higher prices, and less choice, then how about turning the DoJ around and pointing them in the right direction?

[New York Post via BGR

Streaming music service Lala, acquired by Apple back in early December, 2009, has sent a letter to subscribers telling them they're shutting down as of May 31, and while remaining credit will get transferred to iTunes, streaming music won't show up in an iTunes.com any time soon.

The Lala service will be shut down on May 31st.

In appreciation of your support over the last five years, you will receive a credit in the amount of your Lala web song purchases for use on Apple's iTunes Store. If you purchased and downloaded mp3 songs from Lala, those songs will continue to play as part of your local music library.

Remaining wallet balances and unredeemed gift cards will be converted to iTunes Store credit (or can be refunded upon request). Gift cards can be redeemed on Lala until May 31st.

Click here or visit Lala.com/support for more information, or to view Lala's Terms of Service.

Thank you.

Lala

Rumors have persisted that Apple bought Lala for the talent, or for the lower-cost transaction system, or to take iTunes to the cloud. None of that has materialized so far, but speculation remains that Steve Jobs will drop hints of a Lala-inspired iTunes future at the All Things Digital Conference (where he's introduced a new version of iTunes before), or at WWDC 2010 alongside the 4th generation iPhone (iPhone HD/iPhone 4G) and the final version of iPhone OS 4. If not, Apple's traditional September iTunes and iPod event would be the next likely candidate.

That is, if music companies allow it.

MediaMemo reports that the record labels believe if iTunes users get streaming music to any and all of their devices, the labels deserve a bigger share of the revenue. (Because if I decided to play my CD in my car, in my home stereo, and in my portable while jogging, I had to pay more for that bit of plastic, right?)

While Apple could reasonably and probably legally argue the record labels are crazy and do iTunes.com anyway, it would "enrage" the labels and hurt Apple's efforts to expand TV and other content.

Maybe they could insist Apple create an iTunes++ where they charge us $2 a song for streaming rights. Given the drop in sales following their forcing Apple to raise the price of a "hit" song from $0.99 to $1.29, it would likely be a disaster for everyone, labels, consumers, and Apple. Which means it's probably just what they're trying to do, right?

[Lala and MediaMemo, thanks for the tip Russell!]

Rupert Murdoch, head of the massive News corp. whose holding include the Wall Street Journal and FOX, told the National Press Club in Washington that the iPad may just rescue old print-and-delivery-bound media:

"It may well be the saving of the newspaper industry", by making it cheaper to distribute content to a broader audience, Mr Murdoch said. He expected the iPad to have eight or nine competitors within 12 months.

"There's going to be tens of millions of these things sold all over the world" He said it would also help bring down the costs of newspaper publishing because "you don't have the costs of paper, ink, printing, trucks".

Unfortunately, neither the iPad nor any piece of technology can rescue old media from the old world thinking of its out-of-touch leadership -- the people who want to charge as much or more for iPad versions of their newspapers and magazines despite the lack of physical media costs, and who want to merely transplant text from static paper to dynamic displays with no creative thought or understanding of the new medium.

Who and what's going to save newspapers from that?

[Australian via Gizmodo]

The Wall Street Journal reports that, with the iPad arriving in stores and on doorsteps in just a few weeks, Apple is still "scrambling" to secure content deals for their magical and revolutionary new device. Why?

Apple hasn't yet reached a deal with many major TV producers on the price cut, these people said. Some are concerned a price cut could hurt their existing businesses, these people said, including jeopardizing the tens of billions of dollars in subscription fees they are paid by cable and satellite companies for their traditional TV networks.

At the same time, some magazine and newspaper publishers said they are hamstrung by several factors that could delay the apps they are developing for the iPad from being ready by the time of the device's release.

iBooks is the exception, but is it because book publishers are smarter, more desperate for the digital age, or just softened by existing devices like the Kindle? 9to5Mac provides our favorite answer to why TV and other companies aren't racing to embrace the iPad: they're self-destructively crazy (via the Viacom vs. Youtube lawsuit):

For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately "roughed up" the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko's to upload clips from computers that couldn't be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt "very strongly" that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube.

Viacom's efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself.

Dear Hollywood, hire some young, new-media savvy executives, sign deals with Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc. Give us your content, your TV shows, movies, magazines, newspapers, comic books, and everything else at a fair price and under fair terms, and we'll give you our money with ridiculous abandon. Everyone will be happy. B'okay?

According to CNET on Gizmodo, Apple is once again rumored to be considering a streaming, cloud-based (iTunes.com?) movie service.

Apple has told the studios that under the plan, iTunes users will access video from various Internet-connected devices. Apple would of course prefer that users access video from the iPad, the company's upcoming tablet computer, the sources said. Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr said Apple doesn't comment on rumors or speculation.

Combine this with streaming music, and CNET's sources claim Apple wants to eliminate the need for local storage (hard drives, but also the far smaller, more expensive NAND Flash drives on iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad).

Studios haven't signed on yet, however, since they're worried they'll be locked into Apple's proprietary system. (Is that supposed to be funny, seeing how iTunes Music is now DRM-free and can play on anything, while Hollywood still insists on DRM and that's what makes iTunes locked in?)

The CECE consortium, Disney's KeyChest, and Google are all listed as competitors, but Apple's iPad might give them the edge if it takes off with consumers -- especially if it offers apps from "rivals" like Netflix, Hulu, etc.

In fact, that might just make Apple the best of all worlds. Now that would be funny, wouldn't it Hollywood?

The important thing, however, is consumers. In the wake of Sidekick outages, Playstation Network outages, RIM BlackBerry outages -- and of course MobileMe -- are we ready to leave our media to the cloud?

MediaMemo is hearing from "multiple people familiar with the company" that the networks behind Hulu, NBC, FOX, and ABC, are still contemplating a version of Hulu for Apple's iPad -- but as a subscription service.

The problem is figuring out a way to keep the existing site free while adding new bells and whistles that consumers pay for. One idea the company and its backers like: Turning Hulu from a “one screen” service–one you’re only supposed to watch on your computer–to a “three screen” offering by adding support for TVs and mobile devices.

The "problem" is Big Media still thinks it's 1960 and fails to show any understanding or imagination when it comes to re-invisioning themselves for 2010's mobile, portable, ubiquitously connected culture.

But whatever. Would you pay a subscription to get a premium version of Hulu on your iPad?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

How much are you willing to pay for magazine and newspaper subscriptions on the iPad? That's a question publishers like the New York Times are literally fighting over, according to Valley Wag.

In their specific case, the old guard in "print" want to charge $20-$30 a month to access the paper online via the New York Times app shown off during last month's iPad announcement. Seems they're afraid it will cut into the traditional print-it, fold-it, put-it-on-a-truck-and-ship-it business. The folks in "digital", however, want to charge $10 since, you know, you don't have to print, fold, or drive it around to get it to the readers (cost for paper and fuel is zero).

That's just the NYT, mind you. While Apple is releasing a standardized, iTunes-based iBooks Store for the iPad, they haven't offered anything similar for newspapers or magazines (yet), meaning even if the Times settles on one model, the Washington Post (or whomever) could settle on something completely different. Atypically confusing for an Apple platform, isn't it?

And either way, there's really no precedent as to whether or not people will pay $10 a month for a digital newspaper, let alone $20 or $30. They certainly will for real world newspapers they can hold in their hand and share around the house and office, but for digital?

Some magazines, like Wired, are showing off and discussing concepts of what their digital version will look like (see their non-iPhone friendly video, after the jump), perhaps hoping the richer, multimedia experience will create a greater perception of value.

While people are used to free content on the web (Wall Street Journal aside), convenience and ease of use did get some off the file-sharing and onto iTunes Music. Could the same work for print? And what price point will let them stay in business and let us keep reading their content?

How much are you willing to pay to read the New York Times or Wired from the comfort of your iPad?

Yesterday at Macworld two events helped clarify something I've been discussing with Dieter for a while now -- Apple, the iPhone and iPad, and closed vs. open systems, control vs. chaos. These two events were a presentation by John Gruber of Daring Fireball concerning the 10 biggest problems faced by Apple, and a brief conversation with Leo Laporte of TWiT about Google Buzz.

As part of his Round Robin BlackBerry review, Dieter departed on a rant about BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) of epic proportions. A closed communications protocol, he argued, was untenable. BlackBerry users create incredible amounts of content in BBM (yes, chat is content) but it's all completely closed off and owned by RIM. If you leave BlackBerry, you can't take your BBM content with you. If RIM ever disappears, all your BBM content is lost. Something like Gmail on the other hand, works across platform and if you switch from BlackBerry to iPhone to Android, you enter your Gmail account and everything is there. Since you can access it via standard protocols like POP and IMAP, you can also make local copies and upload them to a different service (i.e. upload your mail to a non-Google IMAP folder).

Laporte made a similar comment about Twitter and Facebook. If either Twitter or Facebook were to fail, all your status updates, all your wall posts, all your friends and those you follow and/or follow you would be gone.

I don't know if Google Buzz will prove to be an open protocol and system for sharing status, location, and relationships, and certainly it's implementation shows signs of the typical Google "release now, fix later, polish never" model, but something needs to.

And this brings me rather circuitously back to Apple and the iPhone. As much as a certain segment decries Apple as "closed", in terms of protocols they're remarkably open. They use IMAP for mail, and open-sourced CalDAV and CardDAV for calendaring and contacts. They use WebDAV for web directories and WebKit for Safari. iChat supports most IM protocols, including Jabber. They use BSD Linux and the Darwin kernel for the core of Mac and iPhone.

Apple is generally built on top of open technologies, and one of their core strengths is melding that open architecture with tightly controlled (i.e. proprietary) user interface layers (and developer APIs, and App Store review processes).

For some, that last part is an absolute deal breaker. But they have Ubantu and Open Moko. (Yes, even Android is closed -- you can't muck about with Gmail or Google Maps apps). For mainstream users, however, the front end, the user experience, "just works" to the point where it's become a cliche.

I said it previously in my Round Robin summation, to use Google you must give up privacy, to use Apple you must give up control. (I don't even want to think about what I'm giving up to use Google on Apple!)

So proprietary interfaces to open technologies -- how does that work for us? What happens when we use something not controlled by Apple?

John Gruber suggested AT&T as an example. Indeed, he listed it a one of Apple's problems. Now, some people get great AT&T service while others have connection problems that have become near-legendary. Either way, it's hurt media and mainstream perceptions about the iPhone.

Gruber also mentioned Big Media (movie and TV studios, music labels) as a problem. They want to charge more than the market will bear (certainly enough to make free-as-in-torrent an alternative) and make less available via iTunes than via a retro 1980s corner video store.

Is it a coincidence that some of the main aspects of the iPhone and iTunes that Apple has absolutely no control over are some that cause the greatest amount of user frustration?

(The App Store and its review process mostly create developer frustration, and Gruber listed this as a problem as well, though one that's slightly improving since the holiday shut-down).

So, we come back to and down to Apple liking to control the user-facing aspects of the iPhone (and iPod touch, and soon, iPad) but using and promoting open standards for a lot of the technology underneath. While this approach might clash philosophically with some users (and again, Android, Palm, etc. aren't open, they're just more open) and practically for others (power users who want the control themselves), its proved remarkably effective for casual, mainstream users, and for power-users willing to give up some control for a better experience.

Except for that part about AT&T and Hollywood, but then those are controlled with little concern for user experience...

Financial Times is reporting that Apple might just be set to test drive $1 iTunes TV downloads as part of their iPad launch in March:

Some television networks agreed to the lower prices after months of negotiations, and having initially resisted Apple’s push. Media executives are under pressure from declining DVD sales and cut-rate rental services such as Redbox, that offer rental DVDs for $1.

Not all networks say they've been approached, and being networks some may still refuse, but if the test is successful they'd be complete idiots not to jump on board (which means, of course, some won't).

Competing with "free as in pirated" is a tough model but Apple showed music how to do it with the $0.99 price point (while it lasted). Hopefully the networks pay attention. Selling iTunes TV for more than it costs on DVDs isn't only consumer-hostile, it's simply bad business.

[Financial Times via Macrumors]

When iTunes Music went DRM-free and "hits" jumped from $0.99 to $1.29 stories soon followed that the higher price point was leading to slower sales... and now that iBooks and publishers aim to increase eBook sales from $9.99 to up to $14.99, MediaMemo is telling them to "beware!":

Warner Music Group (WMG) said this morning that it has seen unit sales growth at Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes decelerate since the price increase: Industrywide, year-over-year “digital track equivalent album unit growth” was at five percent in the December quarter, down sequentially from 10 percent in the September quarter and 11 percent in the June quarter.

If people have to spend more they'll buy less? And if they think the price is unreasonably high they'll buy less still? Shocked. Shocked are we!

The thing is this -- under the new 70/30 agency model, publishers can charge what they like. If nobody buys a new bestseller at $14.99 but they do at $12.99, publishers can set that price on iBooks and still get their 70%. They can go back to $9.99 if they want to. Same with music.

Way back when iTunes Store launched, Steve Jobs made it a point to say their competition wasn't physical media -- it was free pirated media. There's a price point where users will feel it's cheap enough they don't even want to bother with the steps involved in pirating eBooks or MP3s, they'll just click the Buy Now button and thank Apple for the convenience.

That's the real model.

It currently costs $1.99 for a standard definition TV on iTunes, and rumor has it Apple is pushing the networks to halve that price, making it just $1.

Apple's belief, media executives said, is that drastically cutting prices could spur sales of TV shows on the iTunes digital entertainment storefront, which have so far frustrated Apple executives.

Apple does not disclose video sales data, but analysts have said they were a small contributor to the store's estimated $2bn sales in 2009.

It would also halve the price of "season passes" which currently cost far more than buying the DVD season set of the same show. Whether this would be in addition to, or instead of, the rumored subscription TV service is unknown.

Unlike music which was devastated by piracy and print media which is facing soaring costs and declining revenue, TV and movies still make some money, which means their executives are less inclined to evolve beyond old-world thinking (we'd even go so far as to say consumer-hostile thinking at times).

Apple has always believed their competition was "free as in piracy" and wants to price their media low enough that convenience and conscience win out -- it's easier and you feel better about just buying it via iTunes.

Is Apple right about TV? Is $1 that magic price?

[Financial Times via Business Insider via Gizmodo]

iTunes can rip a CD and make the tracks rapidly available for you to listen to on your iPhone (or iPod) or stream around your house via other computers, or AppleTV/Airtunes and a variety of third party products.

ZDNet thinks they should do the same with DVDs. Unfortunately, it's not that easy. Why? While ripping CDs is legal in the US, ripping DVDs is not and Hollywood and Big Media would do their best to sue any product, iTunes included, into oblivion if put that feature in. In fact, that's what they're doing with Real's RealDVD right now. This is based on the claim that it violates the DMCA by breaking copy protection, though Real wraps copy protection of their own around the ripped movies).

Apple, of course, has $30 billion in the bank, which could fund one heckuva legal battle (and maybe even get the EFF on their side?) If anyone is in the position to help consumers retain fair use of their media, and increase the functionality and appeal of their own product at the same time, it's certainly Apple.

But would they spend their time and money litigating the right to rip content from old, legacy media when they're busily trying to get people to embrace digital downloads of the same content as the "next big thing"? Should they?

For consumers, it would be the same win as letting iTunes rip CDs even as music downloads were coming online. Apple maintains they run iTunes at low-profit levels simply to fuel hardware sales. The same model holds true for DVDs. Some consumers have huge collections of legacy DVDs and would love nothing more than easily, officially, load them up into iTunes and sync them over to their iPhone, iPod, set top box, computer, etc. alongside new digital downloads.

Of course, savvy consumers are already doing this with free, third party programs, and perhaps Apple is happy enough with the status quo. It's less expensive for them that way, and doesn't offend the same media companies Apple has deals with for iTunes rentals and downloads.

So the question is, are you happy with the status quo as well? Or is this a fight Apple should be fighting?

Yesterday, Dieter told us Apple had finally pulled the trigger on HD downloads for iTunes. Today, the internets (led by iLounge, via Gizmodo) are up in arms because said downloads are infected with Big Media-enforced DRM to such a degree that they can't even play on older, non-HDCP (high definition copy protection) compatible devices.

What does this mean? Even if you forked over $2K for a ginormous Apple 30" Cinema Display, that "cinema" part of the branding will be just plain useless to you except for the very helpful popup you'll get reading:

This movie cannot be played because a display that is not authorized to play protected movies is connected.

Lovely. We understand Hollywood wants to protect their movies from pirates. We also understand that this type of nonsense doesn't stop pirates (who run at pretty much a commercial scale nowadays) one bit -- it only makes life extremely difficult and financially draining for actual consumers. (Poetically, pirated content plays just fine on older displays, making us wonder if someone deep inside Big Media secretly owns license to the torrents and is actually trying to drive traffic that way...)

Seriously, in what other industries can you get away with this? Sorry, your home is not copy protected, please back your car out and try burning down any non compliant houses before parking again. Sorry, food 2007 is not compatible with fridge 2009, please upgrade your fridge and then try eating again.

Sheesh.

Boxee, a branch of XBMC (originally Xbox Media Center, something that gave my original Xbox a life and power well beyond what Microsoft ever intended) is free alternative to Microsoft's Media Center and Apple's Front Row and AppleTV that many believe soundly beats both on features alone. It's had some hiccups as of late, what with Big Media pulling Hulu content (they likely don't want Hulu on TVs as the same shows fetch much higher ad revenue from traditional networks than they do from the internet streams), but that hasn't stopped them from pushing forward. The latest example? Boxee Remote for iPhone:

• the boxee remote app has two modes: Gesture and Buttons
• in the Gesture mode you need to hold down your thumb and move it around in order to navigate.
• clicking on the boxee logo acts as Select/Play/Pause
• dragging the boxee logo to the edges of the screen will act as a continuous up/down/left/right
• clicking in an input field will open up the iPhone Qwerty keyboard and will enable you to easily enter text
• the app works over WiFi, so make sure the WiFi on your iPhone is turned on

If you're a Boxee user and you try this out, let us know how it works for you!

We've heard rumors about this before, but now the New York Times (via MacRumors) is pretty much coming right out and saying it. Apple was ready to give up their uniform pricing model ($0.99 per song) over a year ago but they wanted not only DRM-free licensing in return, but over-the-air (cellular) iPhone downloads. It seems many, including Apple and the music industry, think that's the Next Big Thing.

Still, things were tense down to the last few moments before the big Macworld 2009 announcement:

All the labels agreed except Sony Music. Its chairman, Mr. Schmidt-Holtz, wanted the pricing to go into effect right after the announcement, while Mr. Jobs wanted a longer time horizon. According to a person briefed on the telephone call, Mr. Schmidt-Holtz and Mr. Jobs had a heated exchange by phone on Christmas Eve. Eventually, Sony gave in and agreed to a longer waiting period.

With Steve Jobs (the smartest man in music?) on leave of absence, however, don't think things will get any easier for the historically out-of-touch music industry. Insiders report that others inside Apple, including iTunes VP Eddy Cue, follow Steve Jobs' line.

Apple and music aside, what does this mean for -- you know -- the end users? How important is downloading music over the cell network to you? Will it make you buy more music? And will some songs being cheaper, and others more expensive, change you buying habits as well?

What finally made Apple and Steve Jobs relent on their previously locked-in-stone $0.99 single price for single songs iTunes business model? Many suspected it was the lure of DRM-free music, which the record labels (except EMI) had been withholding from Apple and providing competitors like Amazon MP3 in an attempt to break the iTunes juggernaut.

Maybe not, however, according to Ars Technica (referencing the Associated Press):

the key negotiating component was over-the-air downloads for the iPhone. The record companies held out on allowing users to download songs on the 3G and EDGE networks (instead of just WiFi) until Apple relented.

While this might seem strange, technically many users probably don't care (or don't even know about DRM) unless they run into the old 5-machine limit or try to move their protected music outside the iPod ecosystem. However, anyone hitting the iTunes icon on the iPhone and getting the message to switch to WiFi likely suffers a bad user experience. Then again, strange is normal in a strange industry filled with strange old media dinosaurs, innit?

Higher prices, according to the article, are also intended to make discounted song bundles seem like better values.

How important is 3G or EDGE downloads to you? Worth the potential cost bump for premium "hot" singles? Mitigated at all by the thought of cheapo bundles of the same? Let us know!

Earlier this week, Macworld cried foul over some movies that appeared to be disappearing from the iTunes Store. There was no apparent pattern as the movies were all released by different studios. I checked a few of them in the Canadian Store, and they were still there...

So what was up?

CNet did some investigating, and it turns out we -- once again -- have big media to thank for our poor user experience:

Normally, release windows don't affect retailers or video-rental services after they've begun selling or renting films. Warner Bros. doesn't go into Best Buy and pull DVDs off the shelf when Comcast airs Casablanca. The corner Mom and Pop video store doesn't surrender copies of Gladiator to Universal Studios when the film appears on ABC. But Internet stores are being treated differently. What this means for iTunes and Netflix customers is that movies will pop in and out of the services.

CNet notes that DVDs, of course, aren't yanked off the shelves when TV wants to air a movie, so why are online stores like iTunes treated differently?

The answer, of course, is because broadcasters say they are.

Is that reasonable? Is the internet different than the brick-and-mortar? Should movies be yanked down from iTunes but still be for sale on a DVD at Walmart? Or have we evolved past those differences, and content should be available for us to buy when and how we want to buy it?

With the super-fast new 3G iPhone Steve Jobs will all but certainly announce this June, it makes sense that Apple would want to provide services that exploit all that delicious bandwidth, like over-the-air (read: via cell as opposed to WiFi or local sync) ringtones, ringbacks (shudder!), and iTunes Music Store purchases. Sounds great! You're on the road, away from your WiFi and your computer, and you hear a great song, and it's available right there via 3G HSDPA download. More songs for us, more content for Apple, and more money for the artists, right?

Wrong. Enter the record labels, who reportedly think that if you buy a song over 3G as opposed to WiFi on your computer, it should somehow give them MORE money. That's right, a bigger cut for them, meaning higher cost to Apple, meaning (unless Apple eats it like they are with movie sales right now), higher cost to us.

Makes, sense: be given a bigger, more convenient market... demand higher prices.

Where did these guys come from? Did I miss some late-night infomercial...?

Hey kids, want to work out of a gold-plated office, create nothing of your own, yet make millions of dollars a year? Well, you're in luck, simply become a recording executive, rope desperate young bands into quasi-indentured servitude whereby you "front" them money for everything from making a CD to the lobster salad on the buffet during your first "meeting", and fleece consumers for $20 a CD, which cost pennies to burn, contain more filler cr@p than killer tracks, and you own exclusive distribution for!

But wait, there's more! Act now and you can also go to court and get a ruling saying ring tones are derivative works that you don't have to pay artists for, and then insist they aren't derivative works and charge customers $3 to rent one for 3 months!

We're not done yet! Fail to strap a licensing mechanism on the original Napster, thereby creating a generation of kids who don't understand paying for music, only to get rescued by Apple and their easy-peasy $0.99 iTunes store, of which they pay all development, hosting and infrastructure, credit card transaction charges, marketing, etc. while still giving you 70%. And all you have to do is withhold DRM-free music from them and offer it only to their competition!

Still not enough? Find out the number-one music retailer's ultra-hot iPhone is getting a 3G bump that will not only provide you ridiculous ringtone and ringback (see layer of hell, 644th) sales opportunities, but also over-the-cell-network music purchases, the ultimate in tech-crack impulse purchasing options, with no additional cost or effort for you, AND ASK FOR AN EVEN BIGGER CUT.

That's right! Act now and force customers to pay more for shorter cuts and to download over cell as opposed to WiFi! You deserve it! You're entitled! And you don't care a flying fig about consumers!

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NBC done gone lost their rainbow peacock'd minds? Maybe, if Gizmodo is properly quoting their Chief Digital Officer, George Kliavkoff:

"We'd love to be on iTunes. It has a great customer experience. We'd love to figure out a way to distribute our content on iTunes." [They want more money per show to] "reflect the full value of the product." [And for iTunes to block you from loading pirated content onto your iPod.] "If you look at studies about MP3 players, especially leading MP3 players and what portion of that content is pirated, and think about how that content gets onto that device, it has to go through a gatekeeping piece of software, which would be a convenient place to put some antipiracy [sic] measures. We are financially harmed every day by piracy. It results in us not being able to invest as much money in the next generation of film and TV products."

Huhbuwhat?!

NBC is currently turning down $1.99 per 22-44 minutes of The Office or Battlestar Galactica. 2 bucks for content previously aired on FREE television, which can be easily, legally (and much to their chagrin and previously failed efforts to block it) taped or PVR'd. They're turning down that EXTRA money because they want MORE of it, and they want iTunes to prevent you from, say, shifting that FREE content from your PVR or media center to your iPhone without paying MORE of that EXTRA money?!

Dare I suggest the only reason the pirates exist is because of Big Media's greed and short sightedness. The minute they charge fair prices for fair use, given the low barrier of entry and elegance of use of iTunes' interface, the piracy disappears for everyone but zealots. (Never mind the marketing value of downloads alone -- The Office being a prime example.)

Apple really can't pull the trigger on their DVR patent fast enough.

What do you think?