I should have said “I want Apple to be the key player as long as Apple continues to put the customer user experience first. So far, the customer experience has been pretty damned amazing, even within the limits set forth by the media companies. As long as that trend continues — and I see no sign that it’ll change — I’ll continue backing Apple every way that I can.

I also fully admit selfishness in this. I want Apple to be the key player in this; to be the iPod of Movies, if you will.

I agree with you on this, after a fashion. I’d fully like to see Apple be the key player driving the movie download market, because Apple gets it right (for the most part). But only in a landscape where consumers’ rights to the digital content are protected, and where there can be competition.

For example, I use both the iTMS and eMusic. I’m a happy and loyal customer of both. The iTMS got the interface right, whereas eMusic has better licensing (which anyone reading this should already know is not (entirely) Apple’s fault). So, when I find something I like in the iTMS, I first check if its available on eMusic. Even after the EMI announcement, and if all content on the iTMS were available sans DRM, I’d still support eMusic, because I’m all for the competition to keep things honest. As much as I love Apple, I wouldn’t want to see them become Microsoft.

But now I’m just rambling, so I’ll stop here.

Frankly, I don’t know what can be done to fix the current situation. My optimistic hope is that things like the Apple TV, the iPod, digital downloads, the completely pointless arms race that is DRM, and the consumer’s growing desire to playback content across all the devices combined with the continued desire to “own” said content will somehow drive some sense into the media companies.

It eventually worked for EMI, at least.

I also fully admit selfishness in this. I want Apple to be the key player in this; to be the iPod of Movies, if you will.

Now I’m confused. I don’t want to beat a dead horse — you’d long been defending the iTunes Music Store against unwarranted “They’re locking us into their system and will probably steal our firstborn given the chance” attacks by reminding users that they could always burn their songs to CD. Fair enough, more easily fixed on a Windows machine, and now irrelevant. But how so with iTunes movies? You can’t burn movies to a DVD, encrypted or not. Whereas DVDs are blissfully crackable, and the codebreakers are well on their way to making the new HD media start its unwinnable hardware revocation dance, the Apple system is in its worst case firmware-based and much more easily defended, as only one company needs update their encryption scheme and said scheme isn’t bound by any published industry standards. When you buy from the iTMS store you are still supporting the MPAA, still inflicting DRM upon yourself and even worse, a DRM that completely locks you in to one [albeit high-quality] system. I think an Apple TV preset in Handbrake is much more likely than a permanent/cross-platform breach of FairPlay, and Steve’s “Thoughts on Movies” seems a long way off. So why not buy the media you can watch at your parents’ house and loan to friends?

If the MPAA thinks I’m going to re-purchase all of my DVDs (500+) in digital format just so I can watch them on my AppleTV…they’re wrong.
(Not that I won’t purchase NEW content from iTMS…there’s just no way I’m going to re-purchase all of my OLD content.)