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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."
Because the way I'm looking at it, it has the intention of making Apple close ITMS in France...
I, for one, welcome our new free-notfree-DRM overlords!
I hear the sound of millions of voices in French screaming in agony as they lose Itunes/Ipods.... Sounds like the French will be buying their music from other EU countries Itune stores....
It's quite cynical from a patent holder to invoke the right for free trade and the idea that in a free market the customer will settle the question which good is better.
He cannot.
Actually, the French decision IS the epitome of free trade: BOTH products, the iPod and iTunes have to succeed as the best platform. You can't have one product "tag along" with the other one. BOTH have to be successful to be the main player.
Now, I wonder if that verdict can be applied to the hassle around Windows and Media Player/IE...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
This is just like France to try to limit what a business can do. If Apple wants to sell music that only plays on their player, that is okay. If it upsets consumers, they will buy their music from somewhere else. This is how business is supposed to work, right? Next thing you know they will insist that Apple not fire any employees under 26 who have worked there more than a year blah blah blah.
This article presents the DADVSI law as if it would be good for free software. It isn't.
With the law as it is passed, there is a very real risk that anyone in France who distributes software such as libdvdcss could face up to three years in prison.
Don't be distracted by the headlines about Apple. This law could be a major blow to legal playback of DVD and other protected digital media using free software.
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...
It's about time that someone otyher than Microsoft was forced to play nice with their competitors.
I still think it's stupid to force a company to help it's rivals - but at least the EU's trying to be fair about it.
Whoo, signature!
DesireCampbell.com
Oh yeah, and the United States' capitalist-like laws have never done that.
Breakfast served all day!
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".
And let the mythical "invisible hand of the free market" take care of consumers? Yeah, right.
Damn right. Proprietary file formats are an abomination unto human civilization!
Sorry. I've had a little too much sugar...
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Seriously if people dont like iTunes format then dont buy them...there are plenty of options.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Have you never heard of tariffs? That is the essence of "gimping the better run foreign competitors" and is law in the US.
do you know squarepusher?
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
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
The part that every whiner doesn't understand.
If they can't do it the way they want then it's not possible.
You are missing the point.
I compromise on song quality by burning to cds and ripping back to mp3. Whereas, a cross format rights management solution would help me preserve the sound quality..
Also, iTMS does not have all the songs that I like. In that case, I need to buy songs from other stores and heck, I cannot play them on my iPod. I pay for my music and I should be allowed to play it in any player of my choice.
I can understand that ur an apple fanboy. But, remember that all the slashdot arguments would have been upside down if this was against msn Microsoft rather than an apple.
For that matter, I think many people overlook another "twist" on burning music to CD. Products like Nero allow a virtual disc to be created. So you don't even have to use up any physical CD media to accomplish this type of conversion.
Honestly, I think DRM on digital music is going to prove to be utterly pointless - since computers allow making perfect digital copies of the original work, as long as it can be played on the system at all. It only serves to add an extra "speed bump" in the way of making copies of the songs you download.
Right now, for example, any Windows user can sign up for one of these unlimited music download services like Yahoo Music, Virgin Digital, or Rhapsody, and with a $19 copy of "muvaudio", batch process everything they download into DRM-free MP3s of any bitrate they desire. It uses "virtual audio patch cable" device drivers to make lossless digital copies of the music while it plays in Media Player, even keeping any sounds generated by other applications separate from what's recording, so you can still use the PC while it works.
Apple Mac users can do something pretty similar with "Audio Hijaack Pro" (although maybe not quite as automated and "fancy" with handling queued up playlists of songs).
Complying with the directive by "allowing" people to jump through hoops to create inferior music files is not acceptable.
You're not forced to use them, no. But that's not the point.
The point is that people want to have a portable music player. They don't care what manufacturer is from (let's take the "ideal" customer for now, and he has no irrational preferences for any brand).
Now, this ideal customer makes the decision which player to get. And, being the ideal customer, he is also ideally informed (i.e. he knows everything about every player on the market).
Now he also knows that iTunes is maybe the most comfortable way for him to buy online music. So he will buy an iPod because he cannot choose another player if he wants that.
The point isn't that I don't want an iPod. The point is that I want the iPod to succeed because it is the better player and not because it has a foot in the door with iTunes. The customer does not care which player he gets, he chooses the "best" model for him. And here the iPod has the advantage of being "hauled along" with iTunes, a quasi-monopoly Apple has on the content side for your gear.
The goal is to keep Apple at its toes to make better iPods with better batteries, more space and so on. I don't want to "hurt" Apple, but I do want the best player for my money. And with the advantage of iTunes, Apple could create players that are under par compared with the competing manufacturers of portable music players and they'd still sell.
And that doesn't look good in my books of free market. He who makes crap should perish. He who creates better goods should rise.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What part of "if I wanted shit quality due to multiple encodes I would have taped it off the radio" don't you understand? You don't even have to burn and re-rip if you use totalrecorder or something, but you have the same loss of quality when you re-encode no matter what your process.
If you can hear the additional loss incurred by re-ripping to 192 kbps MP3, you have better ears than 99% of the population.
That means that iTunes isn't a good option for you to begin with.
"If you can't afford an ipod, you probbaly can't afford to buy music online either. The ipod is in the highest bracket of the market, they sell their product to people who can afford the best product and who can afford to buy music. The cheap knock off mp3 players are generally only used by people who pirate all their music, so I don't see the point in opening up the Itunes market to them anyway...."
Nice broad sweeping generalizations there.
"Also, people who don't use ipods generally don't have as much love for music as ipod users. Basically, buying a stripped down no-name mp3 player is doing a disrespect to the music you listen to. I for one am I big U2 fan, so I bought the U2 ipod to listen to U2 and show my love for this talented Irish Group."
Also nice to know that if you don't have the money for an iPod you obviously don't have nearly the love of music as someone who does. (Yes I've got an iPod, the yearly AppleTax Came due).
But here's the thing, you say that listening to your music on a "no-name mp3 player" is doing a "disrespect" to the music you listen to. Well all I've got to say is *all* mp3 players (iPod included) sound like crap next to a good LP on a good turntable, and that listening to music on anything *other* then that is doing a disrespect to your music.
"Personal ownership is a hallmark of conservative capitalism. And I don't believe I am entitled to anything that I did n
How will France lose their battle with Apple? Are Apple going to go to war with France? Of course not - they'll both lose, as Apple will lose revenue and the French government will lose taxes on that revenue. Whatever you think about France's decision here, equating 'socialism' with 'wrongness' is subjective, and cheap shots about French military victories (PML PUT IT IN GOOGLE LOL!) simply cheapen your post further.
Other than that, good try, thanks for playing.
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
Just read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DADVSI
Most news sources just tell rubbish about this law.
This so-called "iTunes law" began as a law meant to criminalize peer-to-peer file sharing as well as any circumvention of DRMs.
The so-called "iTunes" clauses were introduced as amendments, proposed by free software activists who wanted to save the legal possibility of making free software players. Apple was a side casualty.
Haha, troll? The post is a lot of things, but troll it is not.
What would be funny is if France invades Iraq to liberate the country from the clutches of the US.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Yeah, why should people complain about a process that was specifically designed to be a pain in the ass and suboptimal in terms of results? How completely irrational.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
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
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.
if you burn your iTunes Store DRM tracks onto an Audio CD,
it will no longer be DRM protected, and it can be freely used
and converted for use on any other player -- the issue is not
a matter of can/cant, but of convenience.
2cents
The law that was voted today (link is to report where the law itself is in the second half) no longer has the strong interoperability provisions that in particular protected free software-based implementation of interoperability. It would be much more relevant to comment on the infamous Vivendi Universal amendment that is included in the voted text. The corresponding provisions create criminal sanctions (3 years of jail and 300000 euros = 375000 US$) for software writers, distributers and importers for software that is "manifestly destinated" to the unauthorised sharing of copyrighted works. The exclusion of general collaborative work or file exchange software from these sanctions has been deleted in the final text. They also make possible for right holders to ask for judicial injonctions to software publishers and service providers to implement DRMs in software that is "manifestly used" even for at non-commercial scale for sharing works without authorisation. I don't know if Apple will keep screaming about the law, but there is much more to cry about for software freedom, intellectual freedoms and free culture.
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.
"Apple said it hoped the market would be left to decide 'which music players and online music stores are offered to consumers.'"
Pure hogwash. "Let the market decide" is a short form of "Let the free market decide."
We are talking devices protected by patents here for playing music and video protected by copyrights. Both forms of government granted monopolies. Where exactly is the free market in all of this again?
all the best,
drew
(da idea man)
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
An interesting point, but i would like to point out that you cannot use a virtual drive and Itunes together- meaning you cannot burn music to a virtual cd. All things considered the virtual audio patch cable is something a lot of people have strived to create (sounds like the perfect solution to getting around DRM).
An awful lot of screed is being disgorged about Apple's DRM, despite the fact that it is effortlessly simple to get around. Even the most basic user can make a playlist and burn a CD, then use it in whatever device or platform they desire.
E 6-426B-9B32-433F4CABC730.html7 A-44C1-9D8A-4AB90106BB4D.html5 A-41DF-8C18-99A08767ABEE.html
People posting about how they bought lots of iTMS songs, then moved to Linux, and now are hopelessly befuddled about their options, are complete liars pushing FUD.
An interesting comparison that nobody seems to be making: what about all the other platforms that make no effort at interoperability with other hardware or software? Why hasn't Scandinavia or France been grandstanding against:
- Sony Playstation games, which don't play on an Xbox, or a GameCube. None can be burned to CD and played elsewhere.
- Microsoft's Windows platform, which "locks" applications written to its APIs to its own OS? No way to burn your Windows apps to a CD and import them into Linux.
- Apple's Mac OS X software (apart from CLI apps) can't be burned to a CD to run on Linux.
- What about Linux' Gnome and KDE apps? Shouldn't everything be a massively fat binary to run anywhere?
( insert 5,000 other obvious and absurd examples here )
Further, rabidly attacking Apple over DRM is like attacking Starbucks over their coffee bean economics. They're the leaders in fair trade/shade grown/sustainable coffee production, so yeah attack them for trying to give a corporate shit about playing fair, then rejoice after putting them out of business, and watch ADM-CoffeeCo replace them selling Frankincoffee grown in the wake of slash and burned rainforest.
Or, in the case of Apple, do a dance on their tombstone, and then you can get rewarded by the WMA alternative, which doesn't support unlimited CD burning, expires tracks when you stop paying for subscription fees, and will soon only run on Paladium PCs.
How ruthlessly absurd.
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BSD & GPL: Different Sources for Different Horses
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Apple & Open Source... Strange Buffaloes?
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