Dr Richard M Marshall

I've always liked to build things. Since I outgrew Lego I've been building software, development teams and most recently companies.

I'm Founder and CTO of Rapid Mobile Media Ltd in Edinburgh, Scotland. We founded the company in February 2004. We mobilise applications, but are now focussing on Ad360 Mobile Advertising Platform.

I like to think of us as creating mobile applications that people actually use, but we go much deeper than that.

This blog, however, is much more about my observations on the last frontier, the world of mobile technology. And anything else that crosses my path.


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Licensed into knots

What’s stopping the global spread of the download business? It’s not technology, it’s not design, it’s lawyers.

Having been playing around with the the iTunes store and enjoying the ease with which money flows off my card, I’ve now discovered that that the US store has not only cheaper, but has vastly more content as well. I doubt that it is Apple imposing this bizarre limitation. It must be the movie and music companies.

I can’t download any full-length movies from the UK. Whereas there’s a good selection on the US site. Turns out the Casino Royale soundtrack album I’ve just downloaded has several fewer tracks on it that the US equivalent. What the hell is happening?

This is just plain wrong - when will the media companies wake up to opening up?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 28th, 2007 at 11:43 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Licensed into knots”

  1. robin Says:
    March 30th, 2007 at 9:34 am

    We agree!

    What the hell is happening? Well, Microsoft’s good buddies - opps, I mean digital entertainment delivery partners - are crooks.

    They will only “wake up” to opening up when their hand is forced (i.e. they start losing money, or not making as much, which is the equivalent in their eyes).

  2. Duncan A Says:
    April 5th, 2007 at 2:26 pm

    The thing is, they’ve been losing money due to this lack of openness for years! Illegal downloading of MP3s exists because of it. But their reaction has been the opposite of the one you and I would think was sensible - they’ve closed up even tighter and tried to sue anything that moves. Way to win customers!

    Dunc

  3. Richard Marshall Says:
    April 5th, 2007 at 3:47 pm

    Remember the tax on blank cassettes to try and stop people making copies? That was huge when I was at University. Never happened! This is just the same thing in a more elegantly stupid form.

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