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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.'"
Hmm...no, I don't think the GP is missing anything. All of your concerns are assuaged by the fact that you can completely avoid Apple when buying music online. Just don't do business with them. This is really disturbing that the EU is trying to legislate what amounts to luxury goods and services, in light of all the other problems in the world.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
I may or may not agree with you, but I don't think that is the point of this whole article. Say that you have ~100 DRM:ed songs in your iTunes library, and then go to your nearest HiFi store and see, say, a nice Creative Zen MP3 player (well, it's not likely to be a Zune ;) that you think would be better than your iPod. Would you then be able to buy that Zen player and not having to spend $100+ on rebuying all your current music to go onto it?