Oh, what a surprise! First NBC tries to jack up its fees on iTunes to 5.00 a show. Then they decide to dump iTunes altogether. THEN NBC decides to GIVE AWAY its programs FREE -- pre-broadcast! -- on Amazon.com only... wait fot it... They're WINDOWS ONLY. What a shock! What a surprise! What bullshit!
CBS and FOX (what a shock) are going along for the ride as well.
So basically, NBC, CBS and FOX have chosen to forego ad revenues on select programs in order to stick it to Apple. Or maybe Bill Gates has bought off the ad revenues on NBS shows so he can steal iTunes user base the way he stole Netscape's user base -- by giving away free product. It's amazing what a monopolist can do with a captive audience of plaform slaves who HAVE NO CHOICE but to buy his crappy software.
Of course once Apple takes the hit and Microsoft steals the user base, NBC, CBS and FOX will be able to jack up their prices on a compliant Microsoft iTunes equivalent bundled into Windows that keeps out all competitors.
This is modern American capitalism. Don't let the market decide. Don't make a better product. Just strong arm the competition using monopoly power.
And before anyone claims that iTunes is a monopoly, that's bull. Nobody even tries to compete with a competitive service. If they did, they'd have to make it both Mac and Windows compatible, they'd have to sell at market rates (that, admittedly, are set by Apple because they're the only player).
Think of any real-world shops: PC Richards and Circuit City, for example. They both sell TVs. They compete on price and service and sell the same products. Neither of them tries to corner the market by giving away products for free or by selling components that only work with their proprietary operating system. If they did, no one would stand for it (oh, they'd take the free TVs, but they'd never lock themselves into some stupid Circuit City proprietary cabling of tuning system). Can you say DIVX? Betamax?
If NBC, CBS FOX and Microsoft really were capitalists, they'd come out with a genuinely competitive product. They didn't. They won't. They are anti-capitalist corp-socialist cowards afraid to compete in a free market. And Amazon is aiding and abetting them.
BOYCOTT AMAZON
I, for one, am boycotting Amazon until they reverse this policy.
I've been an Amazon customer for years. I've bought products from them when I could have gotten them cheaper elsewhere, just becuase of the convenience and trust factor. No more. They chose to stab me in the back, the only recourse I have is to stab them back. Sure my couple of hundred dollars a year isn't going to hurt them at all. But what else can I do?
And to those who say this doesn't belong on a political site like DailyKos, what is this other than a political issue? Isn't politics about society in general? Isn't the ongoing assassination of capitalism in this country an issue for us?
And to those who say this is just a Mac issue and I'm a Mac Clone who can't think for himself in thrall to Steve Jobs, BITE ME. There are far more people out there who can't even look at a Mac without contempt, not because it's a bad product, but because it's not the HOLY WINDOWS. I was in a doctor's office last week listening to a guy slander iPods because there are dozens of much better MP3 players on the market. Then he announced that with his MP3 he could record from CDs directly to his player which, according to him, you couldn't do with an iPod becasue Apple doesn't allow you to play anything you haven't bought on iTunes. Luckily, the guy he was ranting to pointed out that you could, indeed, record from CDs into iTunes.
This kind of thinking is FAR more pervasive among Windows users than Mac users.