Go Play in Traffic

This is appalling. I've walked into lampposts while gazing up in wonder at the Incredible 50 ft. Kate Moss on Houston Street, but I don't see anybody cracking down on that kind of distraction. It's a dangerous world out there when you can't keep your eyes to yourself.

On the plus side, it's possible that the money New Yorkers lose to the iFuzz can be recouped by pirating music, as Steve Jobs has just written an essay, "Thoughts on Music," encouraging the industry to ditch copy-protection for downloaded MP3s. (Not to be a whiner, but this would have been a better idea last month, when I bought a new computer, transferred my music to it, and discovered that every song by James Brown had been licensed too many times and could no longer be played.)

Apple can afford to embrace open competition in music players and online stores. Consumers would gravitate to the best player and the best store, and at the moment that still means Apple’s. Mr Jobs is evidently unfazed by rivals to the iPod. Since only 3% of the music in a typical iTunes library is protected, most of it can already be used on other players today, he notes. (And even the protected tracks can be burned onto a CD and then re-ripped.) So Apple’s dominance evidently depends far more on branding and ease of use than DRM-related “lock in”.

The music giants are trying DRM-free downloads. Lots of smaller labels already sell music that way. Having seen which way the wind is blowing, Mr Jobs now wants to be seen not as DRM’s defender, but as a consumer champion who helped in its downfall. Wouldn’t it lead to a surge in piracy? No, because most music is still sold unprotected on CDs, people wishing to steal music already can do so. Indeed, scrapping DRM would probably increase online-music sales by reducing confusion and incompatibility. With the leading online store, Apple would benefit most. Mr Jobs’s argument, in short, is transparently self-serving. It also happens to be right.

To return to the subject of iPod tickets, though: Is it just me, or is everything trending in the direction of treating us like idiots? I suspect that if you drew a Venn diagram, there'd be some overlap between people who get leveled by a cement mixer while reading a Blackberry and people who need their adorable alarm clock to run away from them when they hit the snooze button.

Still, it's what—practically noon already? So maybe I do need that.