John Paczkowski

Recent Posts by John Paczkowski

FCC Swamped With iTunes Indecency Complaints

indecent_jobs.jpgNBC Universal’s sandwich-board iTunes protest may well turn into a full-blown proletariat uprising after all.

At a press conference this morning, Vivendi CEO Jean-Bernard Levy slagged Apple, bitching about the company’s retail pricing strategy for its iTunes service. “The split between Apple and [music] producers is indecent,” Levy said. “Our contracts give too good a share to Apple. … We should have a differentiated price system.”

Vivendi’s Universal Music Group decided against a long-term renewal of its iTunes contract this past summer and has been month-to-month ever since. So it could certainly withdraw its catalog from iTunes if it chose to. But since Apple controls 76% of digital music sales, and some 15% of Universal’s revenue comes from digital sales, it probably won’t. At least not until it finds a digital music-distribution channel as effective as Apple’s. “We are in a phase during which many different actors are talking to each other,” Levy said. “We are trying to put in place several projects to ensure that music is better remunerated. … We are not just talking to Apple.”

Twitter’s Tanking

December 30, 2013 at 6:49 am PT

2013 Was a Good Year for Chromebooks

December 29, 2013 at 2:12 pm PT

BlackBerry Pulls Latest Twitter for BB10 Update

December 29, 2013 at 5:58 am PT

Apple CEO Tim Cook Made $4.25 Million This Year

December 28, 2013 at 12:05 pm PT

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I think the NSA has a job to do and we need the NSA. But as (physicist) Robert Oppenheimer said, “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and argue about what to do about it only after you’ve had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.”

— Phil Zimmerman, PGP inventor and Silent Circle co-founder, in an interview with Om Malik