Posted on 06/30/2006 12:47:30 PM PDT by Liberal_in_Austin
French lawmakers approve 'iTunes law'
By LAURENCE FROST and NATHALIE SCHUCK, Associated Press WritersFri Jun 30, 9:29 AM ET
French lawmakers gave final approval Friday to legislation that could force Apple Computer Inc. to make its iPod and iTunes Music Store compatible with rivals' music players and online services.
Both the Senate and the National Assembly, France's lower house, voted in favor of the copyright bill, which some analysts said could cause Apple Computer Inc. and others to pull their music players and online download stores from France.
The vote was the final legislative step before the bill becomes law — barring the success of a last-ditch constitutional challenge filed last week by the opposition Socialists.
Currently, songs bought on iTunes can be played only on iPods, and an iPod can't play downloads from other stores that rival the extensive iTunes music catalog from major artists and labels — like Sony's Connect and Napster.
Apple described the original version of the copyright bill as "state-sponsored piracy" earlier this year, but a company spokesman was not immediately available to comment on Friday's vote.
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.
It also maintained a loophole introduced by senators, which could allow Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple and others to dodge the data-sharing demands by striking new deals with record labels and artists.
Could this be a case of the liberal socialist in France going after one of their own counterparts in America? Every chance Apple, Real etc. got they cheered on France as they made Microsoft release more and more code and now it is their turn.
You must have missed the part about this being opposed by the French Socialists...
Every chance Apple, Real etc. got they cheered on France as they made Microsoft release more and more code
Your source for this "cheering" is... ???
Good point but I consider France a leftist nation to begin with and the party they refer to as socialist is the most conservative party by far but still left of most of our democrats over here.
As far as my source for Apple, real and other companies cheering when France made Microsoft open up its code that all comes from zdnet. A quick search of that website with using France, European Union and Microsoft as key words should bring up a host of articles and comments from apples PR team and Reel’s Networks PR team about how wonderful and beneficial it is for Microsoft to release their code. Don’t forget in most of those cases it was Apple, Real Networks, and other smaller companies that actually petitioned the French government and other governments around the world to go after Microsoft. This last statement again can be looked up on zdnet. Really these companies are have done the same thing to Microsoft over in Europe that they did to them here in the USA but they are just more successful over there.
France is just a drop in the ocean for Apple's market ...pull out of France and lets the frogs go to one of other EU nations for their I-pods.
I suspect that you missed the concept of that whole EU thing. French courts can set a precident for the whole union, or at least more weight will be given in the EU parliment to rules or laws that that court has rendered.
Europe is a fairly large market, and the issue comes down to what one (you me, anyone) can do with the products they purchase and the whole digital rights crap that the MPAA/RIAA are trying to ram down our throats requiring us to use approved, licensed devices to read legally obtained content for said devices only.
An MP3 file should just be an MP3 file and capable of being played on any device that reads MP3 files regardless of where they come from.
I disagree. Apple can produce the music in any format they wish, and create thier own format if they wish. There should not be a law saying you must use mp3. That's like saying they must put it on an old vinyl record.
It's up to the consumer to buy it or leave it. If the ipod wasn't such a nice gadget, people wouldn't want it.
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