News written by Petteri Pyyny (October, 2005)

Despite some people casting doubts over Apple's recent move to introduce videos to its iTunes Music Store, it seems that Steve Jobs has managed to find the winning formula again. Apple announced today that it has sold more than one million video clips via its iTunes store since the introduction of video offerings on 12th of October.

"Selling one million videos in less than 20 days strongly suggests there is a market for legal video downloads," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "Our next challenge is to broaden our content offerings, so that customers can enjoy watching more videos on their computers and new iPods."

The achievement is even more impressive considering that the iTunes store has a selection of only appx. 2,000 videos, out of which, most are music videos. Each video costs $1.99 and the service is currently available only to U.S. customers.

Source: Apple's press release

Now that Apple has finally entered into business of selling TV shows, one of the ideas that I originally penned down to one already-folded e-zine seven years ago is closer to reality than ever. Surely, this point has been mostly forgotten in recent media coverage, probably because everybody in media is looking at the new TV show distribution model only from the U.S. -centric point.

It was back in 90s when I got frustrated to the traditional way how TV shows were distributed globally. To understand the concept fully, you first of all need to accept the fact that most of the Western world watches Hollywood-made TV shows -- they are extremely popular across the globe. But the production companies who make the shows, sell the country-specific TV rights typically at earliest, a year after the show has hit the U.S. TV. This means that the national broadcasters bid for the rights for TV shows, without making any guarantees on when they will air the shows and whether they do air them at all (shows are typically sold as "lumps" where national broadcasters have to buy several TV series -- the "lump" might contain one or two hit shows and 20 unpopular ones).

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Finnish Parliament approved today a controversial new copyright legislation, based on European Union's Copyright Directive (EUCD). The legislation sparked enormous opposition from worried citizens, but despite the public critique even in mainstream media, the parties currently in coalition government decided to approve the legislation without further modifications.

Legislation has several confusing details and extremely badly worded chapters, making it one of the most draconian versions of EUCD in Europe. Once Finland's president (who has right to veto the law, but the right is used extremely rarely) approves the legislation, it will come into effect, typically within few months.

As Finland has traditionally enjoyed quite relaxed copyright legislation, the change is dramatic. Previously, copying for own personal use (whether you owned the CD/DVD/book/whatever) was perfectly legal and the authors were compensated by blank media levy. Now, the blank media levy will remain in place, but at least the following things will change:

• Circumventing copy protections, even for personal use, will be illegal. (it states so in the law, even tho the government tried to argue that the right wont be pursued by government, but nothing stops record labels, movie studios, etc to do so)
• Distributing (even for free) tools (whether physical devices or software) that allow circumventing copy protection mechanisms will be illegal. (this includes DVD rippers, tools that allow copying copy-protected CDs, etc)
• Advertising tools that allow circumventing copy protection mechanisms will be illegal. (and the law doesn't state how advertising is determined. So, basically simply linking to a page that has DVD ripper downloads from your own site can be considered "advertising")
• Possession of tools that allow circumventing copy protection mechanisms will be illegal. Even for personal use.
• Guides on how to circumvent copy protection mechanisms can be considered as "tools" and thus are also illegal.
• Worryingly, even "organized discussion" on how to circumvent copy protection mechanisms, will be illegal. (and no, Finland doesn't have similar to American Supreme Court that determines whether laws are against constitution, but when laws are approved, they by default are in harmony with constitution and can't be later overturned on basis that they are un-constitutional)

Ironically, Finnish education minister, Ms. Tanja Karpela, argued that "only 1 percent of current music CDs include copy protection mechanisms", thus making the legislation invisible to users. However, she forgot to mention that virtually 100 percent of DVDs do have copy protection and therefor the former right to backup and copy DVDs will disappear. Also, by using at least some level of logic, one can assume that once breaking copy-protection mechanisms will be illegal, most new CDs will feature such mechanism.

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