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plasticbag.org | files | Apple and the Pirate Everyman

A lots been written about the DMCA [Thanks Derek] and the whole idea of maintaining copyright as the barriers to data and content transfer become effectively non-existent. Tom Coates has the start of a good essay on Apple’s potential view of all this…

“And this vision extends even further to the way they write their software now - OSX.2 is based on an essentially free form of Unix, iTunes stores all its information in XML, iCal uses a publically formed standard way of holding calendar data. In every area, Apple has pushed away from proprietary software technologies and restrictions and moved towards the creativity, interdependance and freedoms of open standards. Apple has tried - wherever possible - to live by the adage that information wants to be free. It’s decided not to fight this aspect of information but instead encourage it, help it to be free. And in fact try to make it as free as possible…

The reasons for all this, of course, are that - for good or ill - at the moment copyrighted material and intellectual property are endangered and cornered beasts anyway. As yet no-one really knows the effects of this development, but I think it is clear to all concerned that (whether or not it is really happening at the moment) the gradual increase in technology, bandwidth and storage capacity provides an enormous potential for simply routing around traditional media-distribution outlets. Whether this will hurt the entertainment and software industries is as yet unclear - because as yet they mostly haven’t even tried experimenting with different types of consumer-interaction - but whether it hurts them or not, it will certainly have an impact.

In my opinion Apple sees such battles as essentially over already, and has moved in a completely different direction.”

Apple’s right…the battle is over.