When NBC started making conciliatory gestures toward Apple back in January it looked as thought the network’s TV shows might soon be back on iTunes. Of course, that hasn’t happened, and the two companies are still arguing over how media is priced and whether Apple is using, as many analysts suspect, iTunes as a loss-leader to pull in new iPod buyers. Now NBC’s chief digital officer, George Kliavkoff, has cranked the pressure up a notch, with the suggestion that current anti-piracy solutions aren’t secure enough to protect his company’s content.
“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 measures. One of the big issues for NBC is piracy. 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” George Kliavkoff, chief digital officer, NBC
While NBC Universal’s film arm distributes through iTunes, currently the only legal way for users to view TV content online is via the Hulu service. Described as a YouTube for professionally produced video – together with the anti-piracy measures such producers demand – Hulu currently lacks any download or mobile device use. Since iTunes is the largest music retailer in the US, Kliavkoff’s comments seem obviously aimed at Apple.
NBC and Apple have disagreed over the way wholesale and retail pricing is arrived at. NBC are looking to set their own wholesale price, from which point they say retailers are free to mark it up, to make profit, or mark it down and use it as a loss-leader. However Apple are apparently trying to set both the price they sell content at and the price they buy it, passing the loss-leader mark-down on to NBC. The network pulled its TV shows from iTunes in December last year.
Mr Kliavkoff is so clueless for someone tasked with being a technologist. One wonders just what NBC/Universal HR is thinking when they find these guys.
Hey, George…should we tax blank CD’s and DVD’s, hard drives?
Who gets the money?, NBC? Universal? The artists?
I believe that content providers are always being sued by their artists for their creative accounting and failure to render payment, over and over it seems and my bet is that they would have to sue you over this money too.
What if I wanted to use my iPod or Zune to only store personally purchased music ripped from CD’s?
Make me pay for my purchased music again?
My mom uses her iPod touch to show pictures of her grandkids, should she pay you too?
How about you content providers send a nice basket of fruit and an apology to Steve Jobs for being such greedy morons.
This guy dragged your failing business model out of the stone ages single handedly and you pork swords complained and insisted on DRM which I notice you don’t insist on anymore. You smugly cashed the checks and had no hand in the furthering of the technology, no hand in the marketing of an entire technical ecosystem to support the products that allow you a living but are perfectly willing to now demand tribute from the one guy that saved your collective asses.
Apple invented a distribution model for your products and takes a small percentage for their marketing, hosting, credit card fees and overall technical superiority.
What happened to the Windows “Plays for Sure” model?
It went away, with no money returned to the early adopters of that abandoned format.
I didn’t hear about Universal stepping up to the plate when millions of downloaded songs had to be re-paid for when the users switched over to Microsofts Zune MP3 player. Your industry should be ashamed of yourselves.
I’m thinking that you knuckleheads should be left to figure it all out yourselves, a bunch of clueless and unimaginative technical luddites, the lot of you.
You idly watch your industry wither away, do nothing and then rail against the one guy that gave you a future.
You don’t deserve Apple and they certainly don’t deserve the likes of you.
And in case you haven’t snapped to this yet, Apple doesn’t need you either.
By the way, how’s that Hula thing working out for you?
“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…”
Yeah, I love it how they think that ripping your purchased CDs and DVDs is illegal. Its fair use, and if they think differently, they have another thing coming.
And what’s up with the media taxes? Would this not endorse piracy? Since the labels would be getting a % of every blank media (CD, DVD, Blu-RAY, MP3 player).
If the industry can not figure this out, they should not exist. The artist would probably be better off, too.
It’s really galling to see NBC complaining when actors receive no renumeration/residuals for television episodes or films diffused on the internet. Try thinking of the individuals whose image you’re exploiting.
Unfortunately, most people are blinded by their prejudice, no matter what the issue.
i like to think I see more sides of this issue…
Truly one corporation’s “content thieving” is another man’s “fair use”.
Yet, as much as we might complain that the networks/labels under compensate the creators of our fave media, by not compensating for it, you are certainly not helping the corporate overseers, nor the creators. However you feel about big media, legally they do own most of the copy rights at stake, and the artists/writers signed on under those terms.
Any user that attempts at regulating any biz behaviors through illicitly downloading a movie/album etc really helps no one…but perhaps themselves.
and NBC may have a point, such as why should Steve Jobs conduit dictate & benefit more than the record label/movie studio/network that made the content?
you can laugh at HULU if you want, but it’s an attempt by Universal to replace iTunes, Google’s YouTube and illicit file trading sites as the main online provider of NBC/Universal owned media. Ultimately, I see NBC has a right to decide where they want their programming to be offered.
It’s still quite new…
I wouldn’t discount them offhand, since they’ve been in biz and done pretty well for almost a century…
YouTube/Apple not so much.
While NBC execs may not seem like hip turtle neck wearing dudes, they have some chance of sucess. Their company legacy was pretty important in the development of something called radio, and then an obscure service called television as well.
they are owned by an obscure lil’ startup firm called General Electric…
who are so much a part of your life, you may not notice that they bring you appliances, and gadgets galore… as well as many fine wars…
“One of the biggest complaints and annoyances I hear from people who copy DVD movies is that the copied DVD movie doesn’t play well. It is either choppy; the video and audio drops out; the quality is poor; or that it doesn’t play at all.
It is very easy to blame the DVD copy application one uses. It could be. However, you you are using a top-of- the-line DVD movie copy application such as 1Click DVD Copy, DVD Cloner, or DVD neXt COPY and they all produce the same discrepancy, odds are the DVD copy application is not the culprit; your problem lies elsewhere.
“