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Virgin Accuses Apple of Abusing Monopoly

Posted by michael on from the turnabout-on-fairplay dept.

worm eater writes "The Register reports that VirginMega (Virgin Group's online music venture in France) is asking the French antitrust authorities to force Apple to license the FairPlay DRM. If France agrees with Virgin, will this be a blessing in disguise for Apple, making their DRM format the defacto standard, or will it be the downfall of the mighty iTunes Music Store?"

8 of 394 comments (clear)

  1. IE-only shoppe by jez9999 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Le navigateur que vous utlisez ne vous permet de surfer sur ce site.
    Pour surfer sur ce site nous vous recommandons d'utiliser Internet Explorer comme navigateur.

    Looks like they don't want you using anything but IE to access their rather shitty site. Going in with IE, I can tell you it doesn't seem like there are any Windows-only features there that would justify not accepting other browsers; just doubtless lazy web design. Good example of a site to quote when somebody asks you for a major site that is incompatible with non-IE browsers.

    --
    == Jez ==
    Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
  2. Re:Am I missing something? by wulfhound · · Score: 4, Informative

    Players will be a profitless commodity within two years (as soon as 2GB flash chips are cheap and readily available, you can forget about the engineering challenges that shoehorning an HD in to a small, elegant box brings). Whether or not there is any money to be made from the other two depends on whether or not the DRM model wins out against both genuinely-free and illegaly-copied music.

  3. Bur Apple doesn't *own* FairPlay! by sh00z · · Score: 4, Informative

    The article ignores the fact that Apple has licensed FairPlay from Veridisc. It was not created in-house. Now, they may have negotiated themselves an exclusive license for some period of time, and more power to 'em, but this is NOT "Apple imposing an Apple-proprietary standard" as some would have us believe.

    1. Re:Bur Apple doesn't *own* FairPlay! by thatguywhoiam · · Score: 4, Informative
      The article ignores the fact that Apple has licensed FairPlay from Veridisc [64.244.235.240]. It was not created in-house. Now, they may have negotiated themselves an exclusive license for some period of time, and more power to 'em, but this is NOT "Apple imposing an Apple-proprietary standard" as some would have us believe.

      T'would be an excellent point, sir, were it only true.

      VeriDisc's FairPlay and Apple's FairPlay are not the same thing. Apple's version was indeed developed in-house, as a custom QuickTime-compatible DRM wrapper.

      Why do you think Real is browbeating Apple these days over 'opening' the iPod, when they could have otherwise just gone to VeriDisc and bought a license?

      --
      If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
  4. Re:This Raises An Excellent Question by proj_2501 · · Score: 5, Informative

    VirginMega is a store, not a record label. Virgin Records isn't actually owned by the Virgin Group. It was sold off to EMI in 92, and V2 Records is now their record label, started in 96 after Branson's non-compete clause expired.

  5. Re:What is Apple dominant in? by afidel · · Score: 5, Informative

    I don't know French law but under US law you have to abuse a monopoly position in order to get your wrist slapped (see Microsoft), simply having a monopoly does not place any burden on you. Natural monopolies are not a bad thing, if you have a superior product and the market naturally flows most of the business your way then you have been a good capatalist and produced a superior product at a price point that most of the market will bear.

    --
    There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
  6. Re:iPod needs WMA by Yaztromo · · Score: 4, Informative
    iTunes is able to import WMA songs and convert them to your format of choice

    Slight correction: iTunes is able to transcode WMA on Windows. iTunes on Mac OS X has no such capability.

    Yaz.

  7. Re:This Raises An Excellent Question by BasilBrush · · Score: 4, Informative
    Who told you Linux has overtaken Macs on the desktop? It must have been someone pulling numbers from where the sun doesn't shine. If it were true, Google would be seeing more than 1% Linux hits or less than 3% Mac hits.

    You are wrong on your other two points too. iPod isn't what I'd call a niche, and record stores still sell orders of magnitude more than online music sites.