“Never give up… NEVER surrender!”
Apple would sooner drop out of the French market altogether than meet the demands of a proposed bill that would allow iTunes to play on competitors’ MP3 players, according to Piper Jaffray.
Earlier today, the French National Assembly voted 296-to-193 to approve an online copyright bill that would require online music services and MP3 player makers to open DRM technology up to competitor’s devices and services and allow for usage of content from various online providers on the iPod and other devices. The bill now goes to the French Senate for a final vote before becoming law.
In the opinion of Piper analyst Gene Munster, Apple would rather remove itself from the French market than start “what could be a slippery slope of other countries passing similar legislation.”
A follow-up to an earlier post.
Update: Leander Kahney from Wired thinks France is “Saving Civilization” by taking this action.
OK, let Apple produce a version of the iPod and iTunes that will play anything from anywhere. And then watch them capture the rest of the market they don’t already own. And the French will have only themselves to blame. (and George Bush and the entire US). I think this is a case of “be careful what you wish for”. Or how about a version that will only play tunes from the French iTunes store and nothing else. with a big red F on the front of it.
Steve,
I haven’t had any problems with it. You prepay your account balance, and they use a third party for doing the transaction, so they aren’t storing anything about me other than my name, password and email address. Oh, and they do ask what country you are in.
The best part is you can choose your format and quality, and the downloaded files are automatically encoded for you from the master.
Interesting comment from a Reuter’s article:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1940616,00.asp
“Consumers are prepared to pay twice as much for a song that can freely move between different devices, a recent study of the European Union project Indicare showed.”
Is that what will happen – increase the cost for cross-platform music, because it has a higher “perceived” value??
I agree with Bill:
OK, let Apple produce a version of the iPod and iTunes that will play anything from anywhere. And then watch them capture the rest of the market they don’t already own.
Paul
While many will agree that legislators are idiots, I disagree. The guy I voted for sure wasn’t an idiot. Maybe his opposition and the people that voted for him are idiots. But my guy isn’t.
And as I’ve said repeatedly, if you don’t like your legislator, vote for someone else. And if you don’t like any of them, get involved in the process and help someone you like run.
17 USC 602(a)(2) says that “importation, for the private use of the importer and not for distribution, by any person with respect to no more than one copy or phonorecord of any one work at any one time” is NOT infringement.
And if France removes the DRM then maybe there will be a pipeline straight from France to the US.
Fusion, shhh…. we don’t want the RIAA to hear!
SN
What I want to say about the RIAA can’t be said on this blog. So I will just gently suggest they tickle their own belly buttons from the inside! With their own middle finger!