Apple suit tests First Amendment

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I will add, though...

...that everyone should look at this article in Entertainment Weekly (pay special attention to the headline: "iTunes has killed albums, but that's not a bad thing"):

http://www.ew.com/ew/report/0,6115,1014948_4_0_,00.html

So now EW seems to be helping with Apple's invisible-marketing campaign too. Traditional marketing techniques (print ads, commercials, etc.) are reported to be "less effective than in previous decades." Today's marketers are faced with the unethical task of developing new techniques to "get inside the consumer's head" in ways that the consumer does not even recognize as marketing. The result? False "news stories" are popular, as are co-branding & product placement agreements between companies--in this particular case: between musicians and magazines and a company that wants to "kill the classic album" so it can control all people's music-listening options through its one-two consumer slavery punch of ITunes and IPod.

Again: boycott, please, or this may turn into another "there are no competitors in sight" case of a monolithic innovation stifler--similar to the current nightmare in the consumer OS market (as the original article spawning this thread shows: Apple seems willing to use the cowardly "IP lawsuit" ploy as often as cowardly M$ does).

Yes, I agree that at some time true competition would surface within this music-acquirement market (like happened with the OS market when Linux arrived). We consumers must not wait until then, though, to demonstrate that we understand fundamental economic principles. All people have a microeconomic duty to themselves to:

1. Identify which company is #1 in any given market
2. Avoid that company, giving support instead to a company that is #2 or #3 or...

All else is socialism disguised as "choice," enabled by ever-mutating methods of psychological manipulation designed to make people so insecure in their daily lives that they will run toward the phony sense of safety that marketers nurture with lies like: "This is the only real choice you have, since the biggest company always means the best product..."

Posted by: Omch'Ar   Posted on: 01/11/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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