You might have already read that Steve Ballmer has declared iPod users are thieves.

Steve Ballmer, fuck you.

I paid for my iPod, and the contents of it. And since downloading music off P2P networks is legal in Canada, having music on my iPod that others have shared with me does not make me a thief.

It is not reasonable to assume that people willing and able to buy essentially the most expensive music player on the market would not be willing to spend money on music. Since the iTunes music store is the #1 seller of legally downloaded music and the iPod is the preferred player for that store, his logic is seriously flawed.

And, as mentioned in the comments of this weblog entry, Windows is the most pirated OS, so it stands to reason that Windows users are the most likely to acquire digital music illegally.

As far as I can recall, I have not met a Mac user that was a serious music pirate. Every hard core music/movie pirate I know is a Windows user. (That's really no surprise since most people I know use Windows.)

That doesn't mean the majority of Windows-using iPod owners are pirates, unless you want to suggest that since most people use Windows, and it's the most pirated OS, that most iPod owners would be Windows users and thus be more likely to pirate things like music. But then it's just as fair to argue that most owners of any digital music player would likely pirate music.

Guess how many of those serious or amateur pirates are going to flock to Microsoft's service?

Apple is brilliant. They can appeal to the legal crowd with awesome hardware and software, the best legal music service, and their player lets owners to do what they feel is right with the content they have.

I wonder, would I be able to play my recorded lecture notes on a Microsoft player? Would I have to somehow sign and encode them before I could use them on their player? I wouldn't waste my time going through those hoops just to tie myself to their business.

I have never trusted Microsoft, and this certainly gives me no reason to increase my trust.