There’s a lot of jackassery to pick apart in this short statement from NBC Universal executive vice president Cory Shields, responding to Apple’s “don’t let the door hit you on the way out, idiots” statement yesterday, but I’ll focus on this curious tidbit for now:

In addition, we asked Apple to take concrete steps to protect content from piracy, since it is estimated that the typical iPod contains a significant amount of illegally downloaded material.

Illegally downloaded material THAT THEY DIDN'T GET FROM APPLE, you dipshit! And, incidentally, material that lot of them will go back to getting illegally if it's not conveniently available to them.

This head-in-the-sand mentality that DRM can solve this problem is perverse. The market will solve this problem. Embrace it, make it work. Perhaps that's what they're doing and this is just a negotiating tactic.

One hopes. This one, particularly. If NBC/Universal pulls out, I will likely lose my access to Battlestar Galactica. This is not an acceptable situation.

Daring Fireball: It Is Estimated That NBC Could Not Have Screwed This iTunes Thing Up Any Worse