A Cruel and Shallow Money Trench, a Long Plastic Hallway Where Thieves and Pimps Run Free, and Good Men Die Like Dogs

Saul Hansell, in a report for the NYT Bits Blog on current negotiations between Apple and the major music labels:

Also under discussion is whether Apple can sell songs from its iTunes store directly to iPhones over the cell-phone broadband network. With the next generation of phone expected to use much faster 3G technology, this is technically feasible. Here too, music labels argue that they should be paid more for an over-the-air download than a standard track bought over the internet, where the wholesale price is about 70 cents.

So let’s get this straight. The music labels think we should pay more for a song downloaded from a server that isn’t theirs, over a network that isn’t theirs, because, well, just because. One gets the feeling that, if given the chance, music executives would just hire thugs to mug anyone on the street wearing white earbuds.

★ Monday, 19 May 2008