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French Lawmakers Approve 'iTunes Law'
An anonymous reader writes "Lawmakers in the French government have passed a controversial iTunes law, which has the stated intention of forcing Apple to allow purchased music to be universally useable." From the article: "In a statement issued after lawmakers hashed out the final compromise text last week, Apple said it hoped the market would be left to decide 'which music players and online music stores are offered to consumers.' The final compromise asserts that companies should share the required technical data with any rival that wants to offer compatible music players and online stores, but it toned down many of the tougher measures backed by lower-house lawmakers early on."
Corporations can always buy legislation - we see that all the time. We need to make life uncomfortable for the companies pushing DRM. One way of doing this is to get the artists to take a stand against art with locks. Sign the Bono petition today http://defectivebydesign.org/petition/bonopetition /
with some other music services, like allofmp3.com If I create some bohunk music store, does apple have to support my new crazy format?
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
Why have the French taken so much interest in iTunes and music downloads to the iPod? Where is the French interest in this? Are iPod's hard to come by in France? And some other players don't have a rich selection of music available from their online music stores?
Perhaps everyone in France should just download Tunebite http://www.tunebite.com/, and convert their protected iTunes downloads to readily playable mp3's. Or is there some sort of tax involved in all of this that the French gov't is after...
You just burn the song to a CD and rerip it as an unprotected MP3.
And yes, the CD burning and ripping part is built-in to iTunes already.
And yeah, Apple even tells you to do this to back your music up. So it's not like it is a hidden feature or some secret backdoor around the DRM or anything.
Although I agree with your sentiment in wishing Apple did not use a proprietary format for iTunes that is only usable on their Ipod, I must disagree that the French government is supporting the free market. Free enterprise would allow Apple to do anything it wants with its products. It is up to the market to decide whether or not to reward Apple by making it successful. So far it appears that the Market is not bothered at all by their use of a proprietary format. For a government to get involved in telling a private company what it can sell and what it can not is socialism not free market capitalism.
Apple has, with iTunes, a serious market share in the online music business. So they can actually sell their iPods through this. Even if better portable music players existed (I don't want the discussion whether or not the iPod is the climax of portable music or not), Apple still has the trump card that they own the by magnitudes largest online music store to buy music from. If you do not have an iPod, you would have to either rip the CDs yourself (if you can, with the copy protection on them), download it from illegal or dubious sources or hunt through the many small music stores, where you often pay more than at iTunes.
Let's face it, iTunes IS a key selling point of the iPod. It's not that they don't tell you "you have to have an iPod to use iTunes", it's the fact that they have a sizeable portion of the online music market and use this almost-monopoly as a lever to sell iPods.
If iTunes had to open to other players, the iPod would have to compete with other portable players only on the grounds that it has the superior technology. And this is in the consumer's interest, he gets more freedom of choice.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
How sad that a law that is in the best interests of the people in a democracy -- and of society as a whole -- is considered "controversial".
Why is standardizing on one form of DRM in any way helpful to the populace.
The Apple system of becoming the primary music playback device is helpful to the populace because it encourages other people wanting to sell music to use open formats - like eMusic which sells in MP3. It could well be that if there were only one form of DRM (say Microsoft) they would simply licence that and there would be no MP3 stores. If a mix of players were popular but had no shared open standard like MP3 the consumer would be equally screwed.
If Apple wanted to be truly closed and hurt the populace at large then the iPod would play ONLY protected AAC files. That is not the case.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"If iTunes had to open to other players, the iPod would have to compete with other portable players only on the grounds that it has the superior technology."
And the iPod would still be the #1 selling portable music player.
I actually don't believe that people are buying iPods for iTMS... it's a fun catch phrase... but honestly I think people buy iPods because they are "cool" and work well... and this iTMS thing come with it (part of the "working well" is being able to manage your music easily) that just happens to allow you to buy music online... which is just an added convenience to an already compelling product.
I have an iPod myself, and besides buying a few songs off iTMS when I first got it... I learned quickly that I wasn't willing to "pay the price" of Apple's DRM (for instance I make home movies on my machine... and like to use music I own as background music or music during the menus... but I couldn't do that with the songs I bought on iTMS).
So what did I do? Did I get all pissed at Apple and try to make them open their DRM? No... I just took my business elsewhere (I buy CD's for mainstream stuff, and eMusic.com for more obscure stuff). This is how the free market is supposed to work! The _market_ should decide what is right for them!
After getting a bad taste in my mouth from Apple's DRM I don't want to buy into DRM at all any more... which is why I won't be picking up an HD-DVD/Bluray player anytime soon. I've made my choice... I just don't want the crap... but I don't need the government to legislate other people's choices for them.
Friedmud
If the manufacturer forces him to use product A only with product B, the customer cannot make this decision. If he is forced to use product A if he wants to use product B, this violates the laws of free trade.
Not really, since other companies are free to offer an alternative bundle of Product A and product B. Usually, the only time this is illegal is when Either product A or product B is a monopoly, at which point it runs afoul of antitrust law.
In this particular instance, there are really four products involved:
The first is "monopolized" by a cartel. The second is bundled with MS's monopoly OS and tied to Apple's iPod (which may or may not be a monopoly). The third is bundled with DRM by both parties. The fourth is possibly monopolized by Apple, but no court has yet determined that and they are hovering around the 70% market share.
The EU courts convicted MS of bundling their DRM and digital jukebox with their OS, but have not stopped them from continuing to do so, or taken any effective measures to mitigate the abuse. With France mandating DRM being interoperable, this may or may not be able to effect both Apple and MS. If it forces both of them to open up the DRM, we are all winners. If, on the other hand, it stops Apple, but not MS, it will pretty much guarantee that MS's monopoly abuse will allow them to be the gatekeepers for music for the foreseeable future, via leveraging their Windows monopoly. It also further creates a barrier for alternatives to that OS monopoly as Linux will not be able to play mainstream music within a few years time.
You have a very odd interpretation of the word free. There is nothing unfree about creating two products that go together and letting customers decide if they want that combo or something else. That is the very definition of freedom. Telling companies that they can only make products that stand individually is a RESTRICTION on freedom. I'm not saying that we should have absolute freedom. However, we shouldn't redfine the word "freedom" as you do.
Isn't if funny that no one is mentioning that a French company, Archos, manufactures a line of media players, which hasn't been doing so well competing with Apple? I'm sure the French government has absolutely no vested interest in supporting efforts to hurt foreign competitors.
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
But I think you are correct, the xbox analogy works better. But you can take iTunes music and put it on a CD and convert it to MP3 all with iTunes, you wouldnt even have to buy a convertor. Of course you would still look like an ass because you could have saved .20USD by going to wallmart.com or any other store.
Is apple hurting anyone with this store? No, the players will still work with different formats. Do they have a monopoly in online music? No, check musicmatch.com, wallmart.com or for you pirates there are many P2P networks. Let iTunes put itself out of business or whatever it wants to do. It isnt hurting anyone and I dont support buying from them. However they still make a kick ass player.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
and begin to get our facts, fanboys. The orginal law (which doesn't cite Apple and in fact englobes many other MORE crucial things, like CSS implementations for linux) did in fact forbid DRMs. Remember your memes ? DRMs are bad. Evil. Apple's DRM are as bad as Google China censorship.
/. there are none in the French Senate) said that DRMs could be good, that media format could be closed, crypted and DMCA-protected. Hoorah !
Under the pressure of Big Businesses (tm) (and fanboys, but they only do harm on
The funnier is that the law that passed allows Apple to do what it wants with its DRMs, that is the kind of law thay wanted. And that is catastrophic.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Are you dumb? I don't see why they should scream in "agony" when their government is doing them a huge favor. If Apple doesn't want to cooperate, then, honestly, fuck them. They are the ones in the wrong when they try to pull that vendor lock-in bullshit. When I buy a CD at a record store, there's nothing that says I have to play it with a Sony CD player. Why should music purchased online by any different?
This French law sounds excellent. I wish my government had this kind of anti-lock-in law... Who the hell is Apple to tell me what I can and can't play my music with?
"For a government to get involved in telling a private company what it can sell and what it can not is socialism"
I wouldn't call it socialism. I would call it a level playing field. Which is not the same as "free market".
Keep in mind that the "free market" is not a natural idea. Markets don't exist in a state of nature; they depend on the entire legal and social environment we have built up. Nor can you consider what you think of as a "free market" as what Adam Smith had in mind when he envisioned ideal competition, supply & demand, and the "invisible hand". Monopolies (even near-monopolies) and artificial barriers to entry don't have a place in a truly free market.
To talk meaningfully about a free market, I would think you'd have to have a commodity product...one where each product is truly interchangable. But one of the things most companies try to do is to find a way to avoid letting their products be a commodity. If your product is comperable to other products and has to compete on its own merits (price, quality, features), you can't extract profits in the same way as if your product has the market to itself.
On a similar note, I find the whole "take it or leave it" attitude torwards business to be horrible. Take the idea of contracts, for example; it's a nice idea in the abstract, but you can't negotiate a new EULA with Microsoft if you don't like it. How much leverage do you really think you have with your landlord? What if you don't like certain aspects of your ISP's terms of service? Current trends here (towards allowing these sorts of nonnegotiable contracts) are justified by saying that they are very beneficial for large businesses, at the expense of consumers. On the contrary, we should give the consumer more protections than large businesses, which are in a better position to absorb the transactional costs involved.
The response I see is going to be a little more practical. "We're no longer offering our download service in France. If you wish to download music at high speeds, and pay in your local currency, then we recommend the Belgian version of iTunes." It would be about as effective as North Dakota making the same law.
People always said iPods and iTunes were like razors and razor blades...
... except Company A and Company A shareholders.
If so, then where are the laws saying my Company A razor blade has to work with my Company B razor. I don't want to have to pay $5 for the Company A razor when I already have one that does pretty much the same thing from Company B. I know there is a solution called "Super Glue" (e.g. burn to CD and rip) but that would require me to buy Super Glue (blank CDs) so in some screwed up world we call Franch, that is unreasonable so what _is_ reasonable is to have Company B make their razor accept Company A blades. There, now everyone is happy
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
....What we need is for breaking the DRM to be legal!.....
Apple could obey the new French law by simply skipping the DRM part of downloading. The AAC format as such is not proprietary. Anyone can use it. The other music services can also just skip the DRM. UndDRMed files can still have origin information to trace flagrant copyright violators who put files up on the Internet. Updating the firmware in other music players so they can play unDRMed AAC or WMA files would be their manufacturers problem. Ipods already do that.
If the labels object, they can just be told that laws are superior to private agreements and all the music services are simply obeying the law. The contract clauses about DRM are superseded by the law. Tough bananas on the labels boo-hoo! However, surprise, the labels will find out that legal music sales actually go up and they make more money.
If Apple simply stops the DRM, they'd still sell as many, if not more iPods, since now the customers of other music services could also use the iPod, which is still the best and dominant portable player being sold right now. Apple could update iTunes to work well with other music services, but still tie only the ipod tightly to iTunes. Copying music to other music players would have to be done manually or with special software provided by the maker of each other player. Apple's money is in the iPod, not the music service.
All theory is gray