Advertising any product to me is becoming more and more difficult. It is not just me, there is a growing number of people who are discovering ways to skip ads almost completely in their daily lives.
In my own case, I honestly can’t remember the last time I bought a newspaper but it would be years ago. I prefer to get all my news online.
I use the Firefox plugin Adblock to ensure I don’t see most ads online (see below)
This is the ENN site viewed without the Adblock plugin
This is the same ENN site viewed using the Adblock plugin
I used to listen to quite a bit of radio when I was on the road. Now however, I fill my iPod with podcasts before setting off on any journey and listen to those instead. This means that I am listening to content of my selection, relevant to my work, and I am not at the whim of whatever presenter happens to be on the radio.
I watch a decreasing amount of television. The TV I do watch tends to be DVDs or movie channels with no ads. I’d potentially watch a little more TV if I had Sky+ (similar to Tivo) but it is waaaaaaay too expensive.
And yes, before anyone says it, I do see the irony of posting this on a site who’s hosting is being paid for by Google ads!
So if you were an advertiser, trying to get your brand/message through to me (and people like me), how would you go about it?
According to an article on CNN Money, Jon Johansen, the hacker who cracked the DVD encryption, (aka DVD Jon) has now broken the ironically named FairPlay. FairPlay is the Digital Rights Management (DRM) software which Apple puts on songs sold through its iTunes store - this DRM stops songs bought through iTunes playing on devices other than an iPod.
DRM is an evil, market restricting, anti-consumer device (why shouldn’t I be able to play DVDs bought in the US on my DVD player in Ireland?).
Any and all cracking of DRM should be applauded.
Way to go Jon.
Microsoft is to launch the Zune on November 14th according to its PR site.
This date is just in time for the American holiday of Thanksgiving. What is not clear from the site is if this is an American launch date of a global launch date.
I wrote, in not too glowing terms previously about the Zune. One criticism I missed at that time is that if someone shares one of my podcasts over wifi on the Zune, the Zune adds on its own DRM to my podcast, in direct contravention to my podcast’s Creative Commons Licence causing the podcast to self-destruct in three days or after three plays.
Can someone in Microsoft explain the legality of that to me please? ‘Cos to me, that’s just plain illegal.
Apple has yet again sent in the lawyers - this seems to be a favourite tactic of theirs which is increasingly giving them a bad name (and I am a Mac fan!).
This time, Apple have gone after a company called Podcast Ready for their use of the word Podcast and myPodder (their product name).
Robert Scoble has suggested using the terms Audiocast and Videocast from now on and dumping the term podcast - however this doesn’t solve the problem for Podcast Ready (nor any potential problems Robert’s company PodTech nor my podcast/audiocast site PodLeaders might yet have). Apple have already gone after several companies for their use of Pod in product names.
Russel Shaw has a very in-depth analysis of this spat where he speculates that:
we have Apple, maker of the iPod, trying to get right with the Trademark office about achieving formal Trademark and related mark protections for iPod AND its sought-after IPODCAST applications.
Russel is probably close to the mark here - however, Apple’s over-vigilence is doing nothing but tarnishing their image.
Microsoft have announced the upcoming release of their rival to Apple’s iPod - called the Zune.
The Zune will have a 30gb hard drive (as opposed to the top iPod’s 80gb), will have an iTunes rival called Zune Marketplace (’cos we all know the key 18-24 year old demographic thinks marketplaces are cool) and will allow limited sharing of songs over wifi (limited as in the shared song can be played 3 times or stored for 3 days after which it disappears!). Somehow I don’t see that kind of sharing being too appealing when the sharing being done right now (burn to mp3 cd and give to friends!) is still far superior (and cheaper).
Oh, and while it can play video, you can’t buy video in the Zune Marketplace nor can you share video.
I didn’t see mention of the ability to subscribe to podcasts anywhere either - unbelievably lame. Podcasts are the only thing I listen to on my iPod.
Apple can’t be too worried.
Still, it looks nice in brown, doesn’t it?
[Update] - this is the top story on TechMeme right now
According to CNet, it appears that the French have backed down on passing legislation which would have forced Apple to open its DRM if it wanted to continue selling music online in France.
The background to this is that all the music which Apple sells online through its iTunes stores has Apple DRM software applied to it stopping the music from being played on any device other than an iPod. France proposed to pass a law recently which would have outlawed the use of DRM to restrict the playing of music to specific devices. As the market leader, this would have hit Apple hardest but other online music vendors were also in the firing line.
On hearing of the law, Apple commented that this was state sponsored piracy! There was talk that Apple would close down its iTunes store in France. Indeed, it may have been forced to as Apple has more than likely signed deals with the music publishers which only allows it to distribute music with DRM.
Now, however, it appears that the law has been considerably watered down by the French senate. According to Ars Technica:
Most of the consumer-friendly provisions in the legislation have since been removed or rewritten. To see how this worked, consider the following examples:
- Previously, “information needed for interoperability” covered “technical documentation and programming interfaces needed to obtain a copy in an open standard of the copyrighted work, along with its legal information.” Now this has been changed to “technical documentation and programming interfaces needed to obtain a protected copy of a copyrighted work.” But a “protected” version of the work can’t be played back in a different player, which means interoperability won’t be attained with this clause.
- Previously, the only condition for receiving information needed for interoperability was to meet the cost of logistics of delivering the information. Now, anyone wanting to build a player will have to take a license on “reasonable and non discriminatory conditions, and an appropriate fee.” When using information attained under such a license, you will have to “respect the efficiency and integrity of the technical measure.”
- DRM publishers can demand the retraction of publication of the source-code for interoperable, independent software, if it can prove that the source-code is “harmful to the security and the efficiency of the DRM.”
Plus ça change, eh?
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