Sure It's Just One Idiot?

I had thought about this before when the NBC/Apple thing first came up, but I didn't write anything then. Today, though, I saw a bunch of posts about News Corp. and Apple, and about how they don't plan to pull their offerings. That news made me think about the NBC thing again. Specifically, everyone seems to be saying that NBC are a bunch of morons for getting their stuff off iTunes, and that they are going to wind up crawling back. While I don't really disagree with that thought (I don't think they're the biggest idiots, but I also don't think they really thought this through), I'm wondering why no one seems to be pointing out that this hurts Apple too, and not insignificantly. The reports I've see say that NBC's offerings account for up to 40% of Apple's video sales. When you consider that their video sales are in probably in the hundreds of millions (albeit just barely making the hundred plural), that accounts for a decent chunk of change. Is it actually enough to make Apple shed a tear? Hardly. The point, though, is that when Apple acted first, by pulling NBC's content before the new season, they are showing that they aren't even going to miss them. Like I said, the dollar amount is a drop in the bucket, but the message this sends is one that if I were a media company, I'd take in with great interest. Apple is the dominant player in this market, but unlike brick and mortar stores, I would think that it would be a lot more dangerous to be a bully in the digital world. Apple would be nothing without the content, just like the media companies would lose all that revenue were it not for Apple. In the world of online distribution, it's a lot easier to put your wares into the hands of the consumers through other means.

I really don't know, though. Maybe my views are just clouded by my disliking of Apple, and their monopoly on the market. Perhaps even more than that, my disliking of the market that put them there. Obviously, the larger potential damage is for NBC, but do you think that Apple is getting off risk free? There are a lot of fans of Heroes and The Office out there.

Middle America Hit by Movie Piracy

So NBC is looking out for all of the corn farmers of America. Hear that, Iowa? NBC's got you back. How does NBC show its support for our corn growing friends? Simple, they argue that ISPs need to install filtering software to cut down on movie piracy so that more people will go to movie theaters and buy more popcorn, of course. See, it all makes sense now. Apparently, corn farmers are in trouble, and NBC doesn't want them to get hurt (never mind the high price of corn due to ethanol, or massive farm subsidies). I think that we should applaud NBC for such a noble move. Clearly, we're hurting our corn farmers, and that's almost as bad as funding terrorists. Thanks NBC.