Yawn.

To be sure, Tuesday’s move, terms of which were not disclosed, represents a major milestone for Apple’s Steve Jobs. A child of the ’60s, Apple’s chief is a Beatles fan, and he’s been trying to negotiate a deal with EMI for years to get the Beatles into his decade-old iTunes catalogue.

Instead, his company was mired in a legal trademark battle with the Beatles’ holding company, Apple Corps, stemming from Jobs’ and co-founder Steve Wozniak’s decision in the 1970s to name their fledgling home computer enterprise “Apple.” To Jobs, it must have been akin to being sued by Jesus.

But sorry, John. Sorry, Paul. Sorry, George. And sorry, Ringo.

The day you officially came out as a digital download is a nonhistoric Beatles event.

Millions of Beatles fans, and their children (mine included) already have all the Beatles in their iTunes files or on their iPods and phones. They long ago ripped their CDs into digital files or downloaded the tracks from The Pirate Bay.

Even former President George W. Bush was listening to the Beatles on his iPod way back in 2006. That’s the president of the United States, having ripped CDs into an iPod, an act which the Recording Industry Association of America claims is illegal piracy.

And even after Tuesday’s announcement, the dirty secret is the CD box set on Amazon is a better buy at $129.99. You can rip the disks, save $20, and keep the CDs as a backup or to pass onto your children.

Sure, the Beatles will rack up the iTunes digital sales, especially as the holidays approach. That’s simply because if it’s the Beatles, it will sell. And now that the Beatles are on iTunes, the younger American Idol generation might discover the band on its own, if they’re not drowned out by Carrie Underwood and Kelly Clarkson.

For all the Beatles lovers out there, the iTunes unveiling hardly registers as a Beatles moment in history at all. And history will judge whether the offering was too late to the table, as we suspect it is.

Even if we could alter Beatles history, we wouldn’t wish for an earlier Fab Four arrival on iTunes. Instead, perhaps history would never know Yoko Ono and Mark David Chapman.

Editor’s note: Threat Level staffer David Kravets, a longtime Beatles fanatic, has every Beatles album in vinyl, in mint condition.

See Also:

• Judge Calls Bull on ‘Psycho-Acoustic’ Beatles Covers
• A Father’s True Confession: My Son May or May Not Be a Copyright Scofflaw
• Pirate Bay Trial: The Hottest Ticket in Stockholm
• Study This: Copyright Law Hurts, Helps Economy
• Pink Floyd, EMI Brawl Over iTunes Royalties
• Analysis: Legality of Torrent Tracking Sites Unresolved

Authors: David Kravets

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