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ITMS Faces Complaint From Norwegian Ombudsman
Whiney Mac Fanboy writes "Following the French Bill that threatened Apple's iTunes service in France, the iTunes music store is facing more uncertainty in Scandinavia. According to a report in Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, Norway's Consumer Ombudsman has filed a complaint with Apple's music download sales service iTunes, arguing that the transaction terms violate Norwegian law. The Register is also reporting this story:, saying a contract cannot be regulated by English law, rather than Norwegian law, so iTunes must accept responsibility for damage its software may do, and said it is unreasonable to alter terms and conditions after a song has been sold. Consumer Council told the Reg: 'The Consumer Council has asked Apple to respond as to whether iTunes should work on other platforms - they have until 21 June to respond. After that the Ombudsman is likely to set another deadline and then start fining the company.' The BPI (Britain's RIAA equivalent) has also called upon Apple to license Fairplay."
The article linked is a little hard to read but Playlist has a decent report on the story. Also note that MacWorld UK ran this story yesterday.
... though I doubt it. They've got quite a racket going and I'm sure they don't want to hurt iPod sales anywhere. Maybe they'll have to better define a few EULAs in order to avoid this, I'm not a law-talking guy so I'm not sure.
But this kind of raises an interesting question. When a company operates accross many countries, which country's law do they uphold?
We saw both Google & Yahoo! run into a bit of a jam with their services in China. They pretty much violated what would be considered ethical duties in the United States overseas. Is this wrong? Do they face legal implications in one country or the other?
With iTMS operating in the UK, the US & Norway, what are they to do? Fairplay seems to be violating laws in the UK & Norway while in the United States it seems to be law to have some form of DRM (and with lobbyist Herr RIAA in charge, that's not going to change anytime soon). Do they alter the way their service works in each country? If so, sign me up for some musikk!
Perhaps Apple will license Fairplay so that other devices can play the MP4 music
My work here is dung.
Don't buy it. I fail to see where this gets complicated. Microsoft shouldn't be forced to make Word file format work on other OS's, no one forces GM's Corvette engine to work in a Civic.
MS is an "opt in" monopoly, they force not one person to start using Word and their file format. I use them because I don't really feel like converting to PDF before I send to someone. I would assume 99% of other MS Word users do the same. Don't like MS Word, fine. Vote with your pocket book and don't shop there. This forcing everyone to do something because you don't like it is getting out of hand.
The "wider problem" here isn't only the US-centric serving-up of DRM...it's the US-centric view completely. You make a contract with a citizen in another country, the contract is governed by...the other country's laws. Doh.
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Apple's monopoly in portable players in large part was due to their superior user interface and the garbage that generally passed for competition. Now, Creative, Toshiba, and the other mfrs. have devices that are well-built and have streamlined their UIs. Plus, they all use USB 2.0 now (whereas initially, iPod used FireWire and most competitors used to use the slow-as-snails USB 1.1). The playing field is leveling in terms of hardware and usability, and I suspect that in the coming year or two, the balance will start to shift to PlaysForSure as people become more aware of the better alternatives out there.
Apple will lose its dominance, but it will be driven by consumers, not by government interference.
Talk about US Centric. ITMS Europe is based in Luxembourg and its terms of service are governed by English (as in England) law, not US law.
.uk TLD, even if they translated the site, I think they could justifiably say that the Norwegian person coming to the site would be expected to know that they are dealing with a site operating in the UK, under UK law.(yes I know that TLD use is not strictly tied to geographic location)
That said, if Norway was part of the EU this would not be a problem for Apple as I think that they would be able to choose any particular EU member states laws (in this case England) to apply, but since Norway is not AND apple got a Norwegian TLD for ITMS Norway AND nicely translated the site into Norwegian a Norwegian using the site would likely assume they are dealing with a Norwegian subsidiary operating under Norwegian law. If on the other hand ITMS Europe used a
On the surface, your argument sounds convincing. However, it falls down once you dig deeper.
You ignore that "free market" as you laud it exists only in the theoretic world of the textbooks. This theoretical free market does indeed work as advertised. But it requires a few things that simply do not exist in the real world - total information being one of the critical components.
With limited information available to one side of the market (usually the customers), the game shifts from "whoever can make the best offer" to "whoever can seemingly make the best offer" - an important shift that gives rise not only to marketing, but also to shady business practices and outright fraud.
This is where some simple government regulations comes in and supports the market. Through warrenty requirements, for example, these regulations ensure a certain amount of information being available and allow customers to make informed choices. For example, if I know that by law the claims on the outside of the package have to be true or I can return the item, then I have more information than I would have without that law - because without it I would have to research the truth value of each and every claim instead of being able to rely on them.
In so far as regulations create a reasonable lower margin, they support the free market by bringing reality more in line with theory.
I do agree that a lot of regulations are not reasonable, and quite a few should be abolished and were almost certainly the work of lobbyists.
However, this fear of any and all regulations some people exhibit is just insane. The solution to tyranny is not anarchy.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Sinclair's "The Jungle" was pure fiction -- not based on facts at all. Roosevelt needed a demand for socialism from residents in the U.S.A. and Sinclair's book came out with perfect timing. Sinclair was pro-socialism himself, so he wrote the fictional piece in order to scare residents into supporting Roosevelt's ridiculous pro-State changes to the law.
Familiar with the rotting meat in the book? That was government's doing. Meat packers had shipped meat for military use and had told the government to keep the meat chilled or it would go bad. The government didn't listen, and the meat spoiled. Guess who got blamed?
Humans and rats didn't fall into meat grinders -- Sinclair made this up. To this day people still talk about the myth of human flesh and rat flesh in the hot dog. Didn't happen. But the FDA was created due to the outcry from reading the book, and the FDA has definitely murdered millions over 100 years by not allowing certain drugs and health regimes to be released in time to save those who died. They still hold up many medical miracles from our country.
Years later, Sinclair admitted that the book was a fabrication and was only written to change the minds of America toward government control. And many of the meat packers were in full support of the book because they knew that new regulations would keep competition out of the market, a market that didn't have the problems that Sinclair wrote about.
Don't use fictional works of socialism to back up your theory that regulation ever helps. It doesn't, it never will. Proper tort laws and contract enforcement is what will keep companies and consumers both safe and sound and allow both to have opportunities to profit fairly.
Xenolon killed those facts pretty quickly. But the real problem with your post is blaming Apple for the royalties that artists get from their song sales. That is between the record company and the artist, and doesn't involve Apple one bit. I think the big thing that is being ignored so far is the focus has been on iTunes and the iPod. Neither work without a computer. There is complaints that there is no choice. If you want to use iTune Music Store you have to have an iPod to play your purchased music. But, if I wanted to use another service such as Napster I would be forced to use Windows, because Microsoft's Plays For Sure DRM does not work on Macintosh, or Linux. If a government forces a company to open their DRM to multiple MP3 devices, then they also have to open up the OS platform that they will run on. It can't be only one way or the other.
-- I have an extremely witty sig, but you're not good enough to see it.
First and foremost; the whole problem here is that iTunes is specifically targetting the Norwegian market, as only Norwegians are allowed to use the Norwegian version of iTunes. This clearly sets it apart from most other net-stores which counts as *imports*. There is no doubt whatsoever that Norwegian laws apply here and this is probably a large reason why iTunes is being singled out. Forbrukerombudet (ombudsmann as you wrongly named him:)) did however note that several other services would be targetted soon (he lists a couple of music stores, but I can't find it now)
Complaint 1:
In order for a contract to be valid under Norwegian contract law it has to be two-sided; that is outline both responsibilties and priviligies. The iTunes EULA is completely one-sided completely failing to provide you with any benefits whatsoever. They do not accept any responsibilities nor guarantee anything.
Complaint 2:
The language itself is unclear. It does not define what 'service' as so far non-liability concerning downtime means. Does it means the store, the player, the DRM, etc? Added to this, all the terms are not available in Norwegian (which frankly, is pretty much the only point he makes I think is a non-issue).
Complaint 3:
Their attempts at disallowing non-Norwegian credits-cards for use at Norwegian iTunes is against the European Free Trade Agreement (EFTA).
Complaint 4:
Their attempt at having the right to change the contract/terms at any time whatsoever is clearly not allowed by Norwegian law. At the most extreme, if the iTunes EULA was valid they could instantly revoke your music without you having any say.
Complaint 5:
No return-policy. This is required by Norwegian law; however this is one of several points he makes where he does not demand change *yet*, but ask them to share their views on this, due the technical issues involved.
Complaint 6.
DRM; he goes on a bit of rant here, and then lists a few laws they may be violating, and asks them for feedback.
Mark you, this is not our ombudsmann, which is someone appointed to help us against the goverment, but our consumer-ombudsmann who helps against corporations :). If you're Norwegian, I really do recommend reading it here (pdf). It's very well written and extremely insightfull. The main-stream press coverage does not do it justice at all.
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """