wha? really…show me.

The thing is, if you want pirating-related software, most of it is made for Windows. Surveys have suggested, in fact, that Mac users buy their music more often than PC users. I am guessing that this has more to do with income levels and perhaps a relative lack of hostility to the immediate vendor, not to mention ease of use–rather than some moral superiority over Windows users.

But as for which music player has more stolen software, Ballmer’s statement is self-serving and baseless. One could just as easily load stolen music onto a Zune as you could onto an iPod. Unless I am mistaken, the Zune will not reject a non-DRM’ed music or video track.

Jobs does have the right attitude about DRM: it’s stupid. It doesn’t work. Pirates always find a way around it and make clean copies of originally-protected works. The only people that DRM really hurts is paying consumers. I never knew the frustration of OS DRM until I bought Windows XP and realized that even if I do something like putting in extra RAM, I lose control over my OS and have to set things aside and call up Microsoft to get permission to use what I paid for long ago.

Also, Apple does do a better job for people who do fair-use or personal copying. I have students who give media-based presentations using PowerPoint, and whenever they try to get a video clip, they run into DRM roadblocks–because they used MS software to make the clip. I have to warn them against that. They’re not pirates, they’re students using purchased media and using it in a totally legal way. But Ballmer and Gates stand in their way and call them “thieves.”

Charming.