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March 22, 2006 12:47 PM PST
Apple calls French law 'state-sponsored piracy'
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France pushes ahead with iTunes law
March 21, 2006 -
French on to something with iTunes law, say analysts
March 20, 2006
France's lower house of parliament passed a law Tuesday that would require digital content providers to share details of their rights management technologies with rivals. iTunes songs are protected by Apple's FairPlay technology and are incompatible with most non-iPod players. The bill, designed to prevent any single music-playing technology--and hence, any one media seller or device maker--from dominating the online market, now moves to France's senate.
"The French implementation of the EU Copyright Directive will result in state-sponsored piracy," Apple said in a statement. "If this happens, legal music sales will plummet just when legitimate alternatives to piracy are winning over customers. iPod sales will likely increase as users freely load their iPods with 'interoperable' music which cannot be adequately protected. Free movies for iPods should not be far behind in what will rapidly become a state-sponsored culture of piracy."
Apple's dominant iPod works with songs purchased on iTunes--the dominant online media store--and with tracks that are not copy protected, but it doesn't play songs that are protected by Sony's or Microsoft's digital rights management software and sold through non-iTunes services.
Apple could choose to withdraw iTunes from the French market rather than change its business, Piper Jaffray senior analyst Gene Munster speculated in a research note on Tuesday.
"We believe Apple is more likely to drop out of the French market than open up its FairPlay DRM to allow iTunes to play on competing MP3 players," he wrote. "While this sounds like a drastic move, we believe it would not materially impact business. We estimate that approximately 20 percent of iPod and iTunes sales occur outside of the U.S. The French market alone is likely less than 2 percent of iPod and iTunes business."
An Apple spokesman said he could not comment on what action Apple might take if the measure becomes law in France.
CNET News.com's Ina Fried contributed to this report.
See more CNET content tagged:
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This instance may not be the best step, but AT LEAST THEY'RE TRYING. The U.S. government instead attacks its own citizens' rights with corrupt, lobbyist-paid-for affronts like the DMCA.
Screw the consumer!
this time around. Why? Well, let's put the shoe on someone elses
foot, other than Apple's:
If, say, Microsoft, decided all of a sudden (hypothetically) to only
allow Microsoft Office products to work on Windows computers
and not be compatible with anything else, how would everyone
react to that? Any document created in Office couldn't be opened
or shared with anyone that doesn't use Office. It wouldn't be
much different: Microsoft has a vested interest in comptuers taht
run Windows as Apple has a vested interest in iPods and iTunes.
It'd widen the lead MS Office has over competitors and pretty
much make it a monopoly. And no one (certainly not Mac users)
would go for that! Sure, one "protects piracy" and the other is
just a "business model", but all-in-all, it's still the same;
because we all know that the whole "piracy" thing can be worked
around extremely easily.
Right?
1. Buy song on itunes.
2. Burn CD of song.
3. Insert CD in computer.
4. Set preference to import as MP3
5. Click Import.
6. Drag to any player, all DRM is gone.
Plays for sure is WORSE, it LOCKS you to a specific (and lousy)
operating system! All iTunes does is interoperate with the best
selling (and some of the most affordable) music players (without
doing this little work-around listed above.
It's really simple. If other player manufacturers want to use
Apple's system (which Apple designed, BTW) they should have to
PAY to license the system.
You say Apple is not selling? That is baloney, no one is offering
any reasonable price, they would expect to get this fantastic
iTMS service for a 'playsforsure' price. It don't work that way.
You wanna play, you have to pay the going rate.
French music fans are the ones who should revolt over this, they
are losing what EVERYONE agrees to be the best service, bar
none.
Maybe this is the price a software firm might have to pay for having the world's second most popular *closed o/s* after Windows?
If I were Steve Jobs, mebbe I'd even think of gettin a new job.
In Hollywood?
When an artist sells a CD of his music, does he allow that CD to only play on let's say a SONY CD player and not play on any other company's CD player?
So why does APPLE think they should have the right to limit that same artist's work, that they are selling for him, to only play on APPLE MP3 players?
The French government is coreect, unless APPLE wrote, performed, and copyrighted the work it is NOT their place to limit how the general public listens to somebody else's work!
YOU PEOPLE HAVE BEEN SMOKING CRACK!
The American intellectual and entertainment property rights have regularly been subjected to overwhelming assaults not unlike those seen in the opening "Shock and Awe" volleys of the Iraq war.
Our respect as owners and creators of technology, art, ideas, and concepts are being stolen from us and ******-out in places like main-street Beijing (indeed, all over China), Mexico City, Hyderabad India, and volumes of other places for fractions of pennies-on-the-dollar.
Despite considerable attempts by the respective industry representatives, these piracy violations happen without the slightest consideration for compensating the hard work of those who developed and created the gift in the first place.
Now, for some illogical reason - known only to the Socialist dolts of the self-righteous French government ? the French politicians have initiated a law that makes it a crime for ?Company A? to protect its property rights from ?Companies B through Z? ?
Ask yourself: ?If you spend your own money creating something that you knew would be a popular but unnecessary benefit to a considerable portion of any populous, wouldn?t you want to be fairly compensated??
If you live in anywhere in the world, except Maybe Tibet, your ?truthful answer would be ?Yes!?
This French law is an atrocity. It is another clear example of just how poorly connected the French government is with the rest of the world, and it offers some insight into why, on a Global scale, France is still eons behind most other European countries.
If I buy the latest Grisham novel and make a photocopy of any portion of it for my own use, I am well within my fair use rights. I am certainly denied the right to keep the original and pass copies along to anyone else, but I can absolutely "reformat" the work for my own use (to make "markup notes" etc.)
The French are doing all of us a service by bringing this issue to the forefront. Apple's unbelievably "over the top" irrational and emotional "this is the end of the world as we know it" response only makes them look absurd.
The fact that technology has made it easy for Apple/RIAA/Microsoft to foist draconian DRM schemes on the consumer that make it profoundly impractical to exercise your fair use rights doesn't make them disappear. You still have fair use rights no matter how badly some companies would like to wish them away.
Apple being legally allowed to have a MONOPOLY over the DRM content on iPods is the same as if Toyota were to build their cars so that you could only fill them with gas from the Toyota dealership.
No one on here gets what this law is about. Its not about who has the better system. Its about one company being able to exclusively control the content from the most popular legal music download service and on the most popular media player.
The french are saying I should be able to CHOOSE to buy an iPod and then CHOOSE to download music from anywhere, not be locked into the itunes service, and vice-versa. The french(and myself) are scared about one company controlling digital content. Besides, there is a simple solution. Apple can license their FairPlay DRM technology. But we all know how that went with Real Networks.
mark d.
NOPE! Corporations are just greedy. That's it.
So STOP supporting corporations. STOP buying things. Make your own iPod or your own car. Don't buy. And definitely don't work for them evil corporations. Just stay home. "Someone" will pay for everything.
- Interesting...
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by RShea78
March 22, 2006 7:49 PM PST
- I think it is interesting that the French doesn't have a clue how the idea of how copyrights or contracts work.
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See all 199 Comments >>Such ramifications probably will result in Apple pulling out completely as their hand would be forced to do so under agreements.