News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

February 26, 2006

music

More trolling, but with an iTunes twist

Posted Feb. 26, ’06, 5:56 PM PT by Derik DeLong
Category | Music

Billion Songs Dvorak may be the absolute master when it comes to riling up Mac fans, but Thomas Hawk is pulling out all the stops to take center stage. With an article name “iTunes, One Billion Suckers Served”, I wonder if anyone else picked up on this being flamebait.

Let’s just ignore the fact that it’s one billion songs, not customers, because when you’re being a troll, reality isn’t something you pay attention to. You say whatever it takes to evoke a response. Hawk does have some good points, namely being lock-in. The music you’ve bought can’t be transferred natively to other devices and players. However, that’s always been an issue. This isn’t new. That’s why, like Hawk, I only buy CDs (unless I want the occasional single).

He ends the article with:

And….. let the Appleheaded fan boys flame comments begin…..5, 4, 3, 2, 1… now.

Geez, you call a large group of people suckers and they flame you? That’s a real shocker. Tune in next week when Thomas Hawk calls your mom names and then predicts you’ll get angry. That’s insightful.


5 Comments

boyweho said:

macdailynews.com already covered this, and the general consensus was to ignore him...

http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/8700/

Because of the feedback there, I posted following there:

~5:06pm, NewType wrote:
> Someone should fwd his article, which cynically advocates CD piracy
> (by way of plausible denial) to the RIAA, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, & Virgin.

I thought that was a great idea, so I tried to get some e-mail addresses.

http://www.riaa.com SUCKS! I can't find any address, e-mail or real
(except webmaster); surely they must have an office somewhere! See
http://digg.com/links/RIAA_PHONE_NUMBER_202-775-0101; also
Google found "Jack Egas" &

http://www.walmartfacts.com/talkwithus SUCKS! They only provide
a form to fill-out, which leaves you w/ no copy of what you sent.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=cat12104&type=page
at least offers one e-mail address,

http://virgin.com/aboutvirgin/gettingintouch/contactacompany also
offers at least one e-mail address,

So I sent these addresses the following short note:
---
To: , , ,
Subj: eHomeUpgrade.com advocates stealing

Dear Sir or Madam,

You may want to check out the following article which advocates buying audio CDs, ripping the music off of them, and then returning the CDs to your store.

Your legal department may want to notify the author/magazine/website about the liability and ramifications of this position (making them an accessory).

Sincerely,
A Concerned Netizen
---

There may be other CD-selling companies who should drop Mr. Hawk a note, but I wasted way too much time just trying to find these...


ds.
Los Angeles, CA

February 26, 2006 10:31 PM
john smith said:

CD's can't be natively copied to any device either. You have to read the data off them and possibly convert it to a new format. So that must be lock-in too?

February 27, 2006 7:22 AM
Derik Author Profile Page said:

Actually, "ripping" to AIFF is a native copy. You can copy a CD, retaining all data as many times as you want.

The only way (barring JHymn and other solutions that break) to get iTunes songs out of a DRM controlled format is to burn to CD, but then the metadata is lost and in order to get it back into a lossy format (AAC or MP3), you have to reencode and lose sound data. With CDs, you always have the pristine source.

February 27, 2006 12:46 PM
discfree said:

DS is nothing but a chump. First of all you should get the guy's site right. It's Thomashawk.com not Ehomeupgrade. Ehomeupgrade only publised so that MacNN could link to them instead of the Hawk. Secondly he never advocates stealing music. He does point out ways that people can steal music, but never encourages others to steal, so the RIAA won't be able to do squat.

Talk about Appleheaded fanboy. DS isn't upset that Hawk advocated piracy, it was that he had the guts to speak out against Apple when everyone seems to fall all over themselves in love with whatever the company does. You can dislike the way he flamed the Apple community, but to resort to tattle telling on some blogger seems a little childish to me.

February 27, 2006 7:11 PM
Merideth Carleton said:

Have you seen this before? It's a number guessing game: http://www.amblesideprimary.com/ambleweb/mentalmaths/guessthenumber.html. I guessed 16804, and it got it right! Pretty neat.

May 16, 2006 4:19 PM

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