| Tuesday, March 14, 2006 |
14:33 - I hear roast goose goes well with golden eggs
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1937183,00.asp
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Way to go, France:
PARIS (Reuters)—France is pushing through a law that would force Apple Computer Inc. to open its iTunes online music store and enable consumers to download songs onto devices other than the computer maker's popular iPod player.
Under a draft law expected to be voted in parliament on Thursday, consumers would be able to legally use software that converts digital content into any format.
It would no longer be illegal to crack digital rights management—the codes that protect music, films and other content—if it is to enable to the conversion from one format to another, said Christian Vanneste, Rapporteur, a senior parliamentarian who helps guide law in France.
Naturally, everyone who doesn't have an iPod is hailing this as a great advance—and I'm sure all the WMA-based music stores are pleased as punch because then they'd get access to the iPod and wouldn't suffer any hardships as the result of the law that's obviously aimed at Apple and only Apple. But what's going to happen is that iTunes will have to pull out of France, or else integrate automatic WMA/WMV/MP3 download conversions into the purchasing process, neatly torpedoing the iTunes/iPod symbiosis advantage that has made the product combination so wildly more popular than anything else.
Consumers didn't have to choose the iPod and iTunes. They weren't forced into it by any lack of viable alternatives, either hardware or software. They chose, like rational human beings in a commodity market, to pick what they perceived as the superior product. And now that superiority is going to be rendered moot by law.
What will these lawmakers do for their next trick? Demand that Mac OS X run on Windows PCs? Force SD-based digital cameras to take CompactFlash cards? Require website developers to make their content available in every known human language (especially French)? Burn down every house whose owners ever heard Beavis say "fire"? Gee, I sure hope so, because as a beatific George Lowe said on ATHF, "By following the rules, you're guaranteed to make a mediocre product that no one can relate to."
Leave it to well-meaning do-gooders flying banners like "fair trade" and "level playing field" to rob the world of the great things that companies like Apple can accomplish when left to their own devices.
Kris adds:
There is one aspect of the French mandating the transportability of songs from iTunes to non-Apple players that I have not seen discussed in any of the sites or any one's commentary... switching DRM schemes. Music downloaded from iTunes is encrypted with your iTunes account information. To play the music your computer is enabled with keys authorized and downloaded from iTunes.
If Apple were to use WMA DRM then they would need to license the encryption and either hand Microsoft the account information to manage (not bloody likely) or manage all that themselves and be tied to Microsoft software (also highly unlikely). And conversely, all the other music stores would have to license iTunes DRM and all the encryption/monitoring/managing software from Apple. And this says nothing about all the hassles of integration with thousands of me-too music players. All of this can not be restricted to France. It would go worldwide in nanoseconds once the companies have it.
Or they could allow the music to be switched to nice and DRM free MP3 or Ogg (extremely unlikely - can you say Arr?).
Or Apple turned off iTunes in France (probable).
Or the legislation will sink to the bottom like the Charles de Gaul's propellor (most probable).
I guess what it'll come down to is whether Apple—and any other music sellers who fall through to the MP3 solution in lieu of trying to license each other's DRM schemes—can lobby France's parliament better than the legislators can make the case to themselves that they're acting in the people's best interests.
Surely there have to be some French politicians with white earbuds hanging off their heads...
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Brian Tiemann
