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France Considers Anti-DRM 'iPod Law'
Asklepius M.D. writes "According to the Washington Post, France is contemplating legislation designed to 'to force compatibility between digital songs and the different machines that play them.' Known colloquially as the 'iPod bill', it is opposed by Apple, the Business Software Alliance, and others who refer to it as 'state-sponsored piracy.' Two versions of the bill have already passed France's Senate and National Assembly. From the article: 'Under the proposed law, Apple Computer Inc., Sony Corp., Dell Inc. and other companies could have to reveal trade secrets of their software so that their songs can play on competitors' devices.'"
I despise DRM more. So, goodie for France!
People keep toeing Apple's party line that this is anti-DRM. It's not at all. It's anti-proprietary DRM.
You can have DRM, you just have to tell other industry players how to interoperate with it.
This is like saying the DVD Consortium is anti-DRM, because multiple companies belong.
Unfortunately, it would never happen in the US. Not the way that corporations buy congressmen these days, anyway.
'Loose' is when your pants are three sizes too big. 'Lose' is when you misuse 'loose'.
"Under the proposed law, Apple Computer Inc., Sony Corp., Dell Inc. and other companies could have to reveal trade secrets of their software so that their songs can play on competitors' devices." ... reveal trade secrets or come up with an agreed upon standard so that any song can be played anywhere else, similar to how CDs can be played on and brand CD players. In the latter case, there'd be no trade secrets to reveal.
Hmm, how about the unprotected mp3 format? Nah, that's too simple.
Respect the laws of physics, for the laws of physics have no respect for you.
Yes, but sensationalism sells papers, or rather page hits.
This may only serve to help the record labels.
Consider that Apple was able to keep the price of singles down to $.99 in the last round of negotiations. If the record labels could have cut off Apple without losing the iPod market (which they couldn't because Fairplay is closed), they would have (and only sold to retailers willing to sell out their customers).
With a large marketshare behind them Apple was able to leverage buying power for its customers and drive down price. Other examples of this include Wal-Mart or CostCo.
My hard drive with all my music files crashed, and I can't transfer the songs from my handheld into a new computer?
There are two components to this: being able to actually copy the files onto another computer, and being able to play them. With the iPod, Apple does not currently provide a way to copy music from the iPod onto a computer; it can be done easily enough on Linux or using third-party software, but for the average user, it can't be done. Of course Apple's position is that if they allowed this, it would encourage piracy, and they're right, it would (if I had an iPod and Apple made it easy to copy songs from it, I would use it to share MP3s with other people far more often than I would ever use it to copy MP3s onto my own computer). Nevertheless, it would be nice if Apple added a way to copy music from an iPod.
To be fair, when you buy anything from the iTunes Music Store, you are advised to back it up on CD or something. I think they've tried to make it clear that copying to an iPod is not a replacement for backups. I've heard that if you call Apple and whine enough, they'll let you re-download all your purchases, which is nice of them, but really, backing up your data is your own responsibility.
The other issue here is playing the files on a different computer. Apple allows you to authorize up to five computers at a time, and normally you can deauthorize computers you'll no longer be using... but if the hard drive in an authorized computer dies, you can't deauthorize it yourself. If you don't use multiple computers, you can just ignore this problem until you hit your limit of five. Otherwise, if you call Apple and explain the situation, they can remove the authorization from your account. So it's really not a huge problem right now.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
...how this is good for France, since the businesses will just pack up and leave.
Other businesses will be happy to take their place. It's not like no one will EVERY do business in France because the law protects consumers more than businesses.
It's like the drug companies saying that if the US imposes price controls on medicines that they won't have a profit motive to sell the drugs here. Well, Canada has price controls and they're quite happy to sell their wares there.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
OMG - what's the problem here. It's just like France to step in to regulate the market and punish businesses simply because they make too great a product.
You have a merchant selling proprietary content for a proprietary device. If you don't like the model, just buy from someone else. It's really not that complicated. That's what capitalism is all about and why much of the IT world is rapidly moving towards open standards.
Next thing you know, France will force all the telcos to make sure all the ringtones and video games I download to my phone can run on all the other little phones. It's ridiculous!!
(Ok, Apple's iPod policy pisses me off too, but I have a CHOICE. Apple has always been extremely proprietary and controlling which is the main reason their stuff works so well).
Fears of revealing trade secrets?
Does this not go against the most fundamental rule of designing good encryption and good security systems? That is to say, expose the inner-workings of the system to public scrutiny? Or are they afraid that this could open up their devices to competitors?
DRM. Is it about protecting music, or is it about preventing competition?
There's one thing that I don't understand. How can there be "state-sponsored copyright infrigment" if the copyright itself is state-granted?
I know, that this might be shocking for some people, but copyright isn't a natural law. It is the state (mandated by the people) that sets the terms and conditions of copyright and if some author doesn't like it he can take his toys and go home.
Robert
Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162
The Stationers had a goverment sponsered publishing monopoly starting
in 1557 and lasting 137 years.
Of course this led to suppression and censorship.
So when the United States was founded, publishing monopolies were to be limited if not eleimitated entirely. The compromise was a 14 year copyright once renewable by 14 years by the author. The copyright purpose was explicitly to promote advancement.
Fast forward to now. Corporations have been given the rights of persons. Government granted publishing monopolies (copyrights) have being extened to be 120 years. And the most control and profit from these monopolies goes not to the original authors, but the media companies (the modern Stationers).
DRM attempts to go beyond any government limits, and establish complete control of publishing media.
"since the businesses will just pack up and leave."
And be replaced by French business. The French music scene is quite large.
/. bug #926803 - Why I can post.
An alphabet soup of microsoft protocols, and they go after AAC players.
Good grief.....
Make it "industry wide", idiots. That it ONLY applies to music players makes me thing MS is behind the scenes, somehow.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Do you honestly think that someone else won't fill the void?
That's the beauty of a properly functioning free market. DRM, abusive terms of copyright, and poor patent practices all attempt to break the free market. But it has survived in the past, and will continue to in the future.
Apple doesn't want to lose the French market, and they don't want to play fair with their competitors. Too bad. The French government giveth them rights, and taketh them away, as it suits the interests of the French.
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
It's funny how no one has mentioned Microsoft, MTV, and the Urge! brand fit into this.
Talk about lockout.
I understand France's position on this but people still have a choice.
With Urge!, you only have 1 way and 1 OS to comply.
And when did MTV only require IE now to view their video content?
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
First off, opening DRM so different music players can interoperate with these DRMed files has NOTHING to do with piracy. Having said that, I thought piracy, at least in this digital age, meant the illegal copying, trading, selling, "stealing," etc of digital information (bits). The concept of "State Sponsored" piracy just seems to be a huge oxymoron. If the state were actually saying that these are legal activities, wouldn't it cease to really be piracy? The fact that corporations are accusing governments of this kind of stuff makes my head spin. I thought the government was suppose to define what was illegal, and not corporations. Oh wait...
"To lead the people, you must walk behind them"
I would always prefer in an ideal world for market forces to drive the way a company works. If a company's product or business model is not liked by the consumer, then it will not prosper. What France wants to do, is to single out and punish the most successful business in a given market, entirely because of its success and ubiquity. I wish Apple would open up their particular DRM methodology, but why the hell should they? They are selling iPod + iTunes as one product and most people continue to buy it anyway, even though there are other ways of achieving the same goal: to listen to online-purchased music on a digital player. I believe that is the major caveat for France: There is NO monopoly here because people can get the exact same music on any player they want (the easiest thing to do is to rip it off your CD). I feel that if the consumer truly feels cheated by Apple, then they should not be buying Apple products. It just seems like the French government wants custom offerings from the private sector without paying anything.
No, it isn't. If France makes a law that outlaws iTunes as it stands today, then they can either adapt iTunes, or not sell songs to the French.
Fuck Apple. They're the monopoly in this case, so they deserve the most punishment. I bought a number of songs from iTMS, and that was fine when I had a Mac. As the quality of OS X declined with each release (10.4.5 killed pubcookie on two production servers...), I decided to give up on Apple and bought a Dell running Debian (from which I type this post). Unfortunately, I can't play the music that I legally bought. I have to download music from BitTorrent, harming the artists and the record companies. If I had a choice, I'd pay for music, but I don't have that option anymore. CDs aren't an option, since I only want one song.
;)
Sorry, Apple, but you need to be open. Selling music online legally is great. Discriminating against who you sell music to isn't. (For the record, iHave an iPod, so Apple wouldn't be "losing" anything by selling to me. Only gaining.)
Whatever, I don't like American music anyway. When will I be able to buy JPop and good digital classical recordings online? When will I be able to buy uncompressed 5 channel surround recordings? That sort of stuff would really excite me, and really open my wallet
My other car is first.
Except that Apple doesn't need them to do anything. This is France trying to pass a law that makes iTunes illegal. If anyone is being blackmailed, it's Apple.
You got to that part before me, but you left out the now well known fact that DRM doesnt stop piracy, only competition... so really it's more like "state sponsored enforcement of a truly free marketplace"
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
You say that while you wish to pay the artist and the record companies you cannot, you are being forced to piracy because of the anti consumer measures built into the product you legally purchased.
This is how Digital Restrictions Management is fuelling piracy and reducing the income of the artists.
Personally I couldn't give a stuff about the record companies. They've had their day, it's over.
Their function was the recording and distribution of other peoples music. In the analogue physical world this is expensive but In the digital world anyone can record and distribute music, be it their own or anyone else's. Now the record companies only function are to take money from both the artist and consumer. DRM is their way of artificially imposing the restrictions of the physical world on digital media ensuring their continuation buy enabling them to buy at below market value from the artists and sell at an inflated price to you the consumer. The RIAA represents the rights of the artist like a Pimp represents the rights of prostitutes.
There are a lot of fair trade 'DRM-free' legal music sites appearing now and I hope they will prove the downfall of the majors or at least make them sit up and take notice that DRM is a foolish policy. Fair Trade Music can only work if people are willing to buy it and this where piracy hurts truly free music.
On the other side I can see that people really like a particular artist or track but they are affiliated to the music fascists. In this case you must make the choice between giving money to a corrupt cartel or piracy. IMO the major labels are stifling music. I would rather see more artists producing music at a lower salary rather than a limited number of 'lucky' ones who are getting all of the money. If you don't think it's fair then you don't love music so get out! Given this I feel that obtaining music through piracy is the lesser evil but that those who choose this path must remember that it is only a lesser evil and not the true solution that open fair trade music is.