NBC would ‘love’ to be back in iTunes, they would also love to keep your files out of it


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George Kliavkoff, chief digital officer for NBC Universal is singing a different ‘tune’ about iTunes according to CNET.

The “chief digital officer” stated in a interview at the Ad:Tech conference that NBC would ‘ 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.’

However, they have some concerns about piracy. Gee — who’s surprised?

He says, “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.”

I wonder what kind of antipiracy measures he’s thinking about? Does he really think Apple is going to put some kind of scanning application into iTunes that watches all your video before hand and can somehow tell if you’re loading an episode of ‘The Office’ onto your iPod that you didn’t buy from iTunes?

The only true way to ever do what he wants is to only allow video that has been purchased from iTunes to play on an iPod. As I’m sure you’ll all agree…that would kill the iPod. It’s not going to happen. Ever. If it does, you can kiss the iPod goodbye, because people will not stand for it.

Forget piracy, I may want video of my kids on the iPod – hell, I DO want podcasts on my iPod – that’s 90% of the video on the thing in the first place (mine, anyway).

So, to Mr. Kliavkoff, I say “Good luck with that.”

What do you think? Do you think there is a way to pull this off? If they did pull it off, would you stop using your iPod and move to something else?


Kossi Adzo

Kossi Adzo is a technology enthusiast and digital strategist with a fervent passion for Apple products and the innovative technologies that orbit them. With a background in computer science and a decade of experience in app development and digital marketing, Kossi brings a wealth of knowledge and a unique perspective to the Apple Gazette team.

10 Comments

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  1. as soon as i cannot use my own videos or mp3s on an ipod i am gone from them. i really love em but what i love way more is my media data. the good thing is that apple seems to know that so there should be no problem from that side in the future i think.

  2. 2 things…

    Does NBC have more than a couple of shows worth watching anyway?

    Does this asshat realize that you can download his show for free in a dozen or so different ways if you so desire and then play it however you want? The fact that any people at all were willing to pay for their stupid shows (any networks for that matter) should just be icing on the cake. They are making more money on their shows now then they ever were.

  3. NBC isn’t the only company that is clearly blind in the digital era. Refusing to offer your shows for sale doesn’t prevent piracy if anything it increases it. South Park is a perfect example for me. I pirate a lot of my shows (I know, sue me) but since Apple has released TV Shows in Canada I’ve been just buying the episodes. Its faster and a hell of a lot easier.

    Now as far as add more anti piracy features to iTunes, it would ruin the app and Apple isn’t that stupid. There’s no way to detect if a video file is downloading illegally or ripped from your own dvd. They would have to prevent adding all video files and only allow those purchased from iTunes. If that was ever the case what would stop music studios from wanting the same deal with music. Its dumb and would render the iPod useless.

    NBC has their heads so far up their own ass its not even funny anymore. Same goes for the major record labels refusing to offer DRM free tracks to iTunes but rival Amazon instead. Considering iTunes is the #1 music retailer now and Amazon affecting less than 10% of iTunes users its making them look like idiots. Personally DRM never stopped me as there are methods of getting around it if you must, but I don’t speak for everything and DRM for many is a deal breaker.

  4. I get so very-very tired of corporate numbnuts trying to tell me they have a right to patrol my property in order to protect their profit margin. The guilty-until-proven innocent bit is definitely getting on my nerves.

    For the record, I don’t necessarily think it will KILL the ipods. However, I think what you will see is a spike in (for want of a better term), let’s just call them jailbroken ipods. They think they have a problem with people cracking the firmware on iphones? HA. Ain’t seen NOTHING yet. If they put some form of stringent DRM babysitting function into the ipods the crack rate will go through the roof, and the ipod user base is 10 times the size of the iphone base.

  5. I can’t understand how record labels and movie studios can be so ignorant when it comes to piracy. Theft destroys the value of property to it’s rightful owner. Piracy simply copies, but does not remove the original owners property. If you steal my car, I no longer have a car. But if you pirate my songs, I still have my songs. This lowers the stigma attached to piracy.

    Piracy is nothing new. All written materials have been pirated and there was a huge amount of piracy when copier machines became more affordable. The way to attack piracy is with pricing and convenience and uniqueness. The industry needs to think of piracy as a competitor and attack it accordingly. Experience has shown that people are willing to pay a premium to own a legitimate copy of a book, a song or a movie. But if you make it hard to be legal, by making it inconvenient or by imposing exorbitant prices or by implementing ridiculous constraints then people are going to feel justified in pirating.

    This isn’t new. There have been many economic studies done on the topic.

  6. Funny, at the time NBC/Universal pulled out of iTunes, the only shows I was actually purchasing on iTunes were NBC/Universal properties. When they pulled out, they lost my purchasing dollars from HEROES and BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, and my intended purchasing dollars from BIONIC WOMAN (well, the pilot had potential at least), and likely JOURNEYMAN, CHUCK, and a couple of others that were coming out this season. So, to watch them on my laptop (usually the next day’s lunch hour) I’d record the shows on my DVD recorder and catch them that way – not as convenient for me, I’d have to remember to grab the disc, yadda yadda. At least I’m not buying the shows twice any more – once to watch and again when the boxed set comes out, tho that was only BSG and HEROES. Still, lost revenue, guys. Good corporate decision-making. So is anything locking those Amazon Unboxed-friendly players out from playing their own MP3’s or videos? Somehow, I don’t think so.

  7. I gave up on these out of touch techno-idiots. I simply subscribe to Netflix and get the TV shows I want and use Handbrake to get them on my AppleTV, iPhone, etc.

  8. A lot of people complain about the DRM found on music bought at the iTunes Music Store. This is quite natural, since iTunes is by far the biggest supplier of music files, and the only legal place to buy files that play on iPods. iTunes only allows you to upload the files to a few iPods, burn them to a few CDs, and play them on a few computers. And you can only upload files to YOUR iPods; If someone else’s iPod is set to play music from their account, the only way to put music from YOUR account into their iPod is to re-set that iPod to your account (which requires erasing all the music in it). And if you want to get music DOWN from an iPod, then this is basically impossible. So you need converter which help you to solve such drm-problem.

    One such program is [url=https://www.melodycan.com]Melodycan[/url]. All you have to do is open it, adjust the settings if you want, pick a back-up folder and start the conversion (maximum summary converting speed is 50x ). Nothing could be easier. If you have the latest version of this program and the right version of iTunes, though, you`ll haven`t any problems.

  9. Do these mental giants realize that the way a lot of the pirated TV shows get to the web is through content distributed via DVD??? Why do they continually like to blame Apple, iTunes and iPods? I guess it’s OK to use Amazon, though! They’re different, right? Puh-lease…