Now we know the real reason NBC pulled its content off of Apple’s iTunes Store. Read:
NBC Universal’s decision to offer TV shows at the Zune Marketplace has been largely motivated by its willingness to bend on anti-piracy measures, the New York Times states in a talk with NBC’s digital media head, J. B. Perrette.
Microsoft confirms the report and says it has been evaluating a filtering method with the broadcast giant that would screen pirated copies of videos from Zune devices, similar to methods in the works by Google and others to prevent unauthorized uploads.
Apple’s DRM is pretty obnoxious, but it’s also pretty easy to remove. And Apple has never tried to control what content (legal or not) I can copy to my iPod. Or even how many iPods I can move content onto. And Apple has certainly never installed some kind of video-recognition spyware on my computer.
I thought Microsoft was supposed to be moving away from DRM. Instead, they’re tightening the screws.
UPDATE: Microsoft denies it has an agreement with NBC to filter content, but left themselves plenty of wiggle room.
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