Michael Arlington, formerly of Techcrunch, has reported on a Q&A session between Bill Gates and a group of bloggers, part of a day-long event at which each of the chosen bloggers received a free Zune, Microsoft's iPod-slayer. (Michael says this is his third Zune. No guesses what 2 people in his family will be getting this Christmas!)
Apart from the look on Gates' face when he saw that every blogger was using a Mac, the most interesting thing in Michael's report is Gates' view on DRM: it's a bit rubbish and there are "huge problems" with it. Gates' suggestion:
“People should just buy a cd and rip it. You are legal then.”
IMPACT's first comment: that's all very well in the USA, but over here there is no right to take a private copy of music. See our post about private copies.
IMPACT's second comment: Microsoft isn't free of DRM-related controversy itself; the copying and copy protection system in Zunes causes problems for people wanting to legitimately distribute music under Creative Commons licenses. See our post about the Zune and Creative Commons.
IMPACT's third comment: One of our team, Andrew, has been given about 3 free iPods so far at various IP conventions but we don't have any Zunes.
Comments