EU Countries Call Out iTunes DRM

seriouslywtf writes "Europe is upping the pressure on Apple to open up its restrictive DRM that ties iTunes to the iPod. Norway ruled last year that the iPod-iTunes tie-in was unreasonable and gave Apple a deadline to make a change to its policies, but was unsatisfied with the response they got. Now France and Germany have joined forces with Norway, making it a lot harder for Apple to just walk away from those markets. From the article: 'France's consumer lobby group, UFC-Que Choisir, and Germany's Verbraucherzentrale are now part of the European effort to push Apple into an open DRM system, with more countries considering joining the group. However, the company has been under some fire over the last year due to those restrictions, first with France and then Denmark looking to open up restrictive DRM schemes (including, but not limited to iTunes) ... Norwegian consumer groups were unimpressed by Apple's response. Norway has now given Apple a new deadline of September of this year to change its policies, and the pressure on Apple will likely grow in the months leading up to the deadline.'"

Comments

But in the US, we get the "PERFORM Act"

[sdo1]

What a great country I live in. Here we have legislators in the pockets of media companies proposing laws that would require DRM, but in Europe, the legislators (apparantly acting on behalf of the populus, which is what I thought the "of the people, by the people, and for the people" US government is SUPPOSED to do) are rightly saying that DRM is unfair to the people.

Is this a great country, or what?

Sigh.

-S

Re:But in the US, we get the "PERFORM Act"

[Experiment 626]

...but in Europe, the legislators ... are rightly saying that DRM is unfair to the people.

They are? It sounds to me like they are just trying to make digital music player makers, distributors, etc. license each others' DRM schemes to increase DRM interoperability. If they were saying that "DRM is unfair to the people", they could just ban it. That would also address both of their complaints (iTunes songs don't play on non-iPods, iPods don't play DRM-encumbered songs bought elsewhere) as people would use the MP3 format for songs, and it plays on everything.

Re:WHy is this a problem?

[elcid73]

Or realize it but don't care. Last time I brought this up I got blasted by Slashdot because people seem to think that just because I don't want golden, infinite access to every track purchased since I was 5 years old that that somehow means I have horrible taste in music. Slashdot group thing seems to completely neglect the fact that a dollar for a track is worth it (to me) to get a good amount of use in a very convenient manner (where convenient means: purchase, sync, correct meta-data, no virus, searching, ethical dilemas,etc...) ...but if tomorrow I lose the song, I'm not going to miss out considerably. If I really like and want to keep something- I'd just go buy the whole CD. Or... just get over it. That 99cents is the price I pay for "easy"