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  • WEDNESDAY MARCH 22 2006 9:45 AM

France Loves Pirates

Submitted by seanbonner

Edited by seanbonner

Or so says Apple. France is fighting the good fight and trying to stomp out evil DRM (on music anyway) which Apple is calling "state-sponsored piracy."

Apple’s harsh words follow the initial passage of legislation in France on Tuesday that, if passed by a second legislative body, would ultimately force companies to sell digital music that is compatible with any music player. Currently, songs bought on Apple’s popular iTunes online music store can only be played on Apple’s iPod music players.

If the law passes, “legal music sales will plummet just when legitimate alternatives to piracy are winning over customers,” the company said. Free movies would follow close behind, the company asserted, “in what will rapidly become a state-sponsored culture of piracy.”



There's a good deal of back and forth following this with people speculating that iPod sales would go up because people would be able to play music they didn't buy from iTunes or rip themselves, but that isn't likely to convince Apple it's a good idea. As much as I love my Macs, Apple has never been a bastion of openness and has opted for the closed route more than once. If this law passes iTunes France is expected to just close up shop rather than comply which is a shame but something that comes with an easy solution. Much the same way that Apple has pushed technological change by dropping SCSI or pushing USB, if more governments follow in France's footsteps Apple will eventually have to accept that people don't want companies mandating what they can do with their own music.

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Comments
FrankMask

FrankMask

Saint Paul, MN
June 2003

MAR 22, 2006 11:04 AM

Hah. Go France. I just bought a new Minidisc player today to replace one that broke recently, and not a little bit of that choice was my reluctance to turn into a pod person.

13Jack

13Jack

USA
September 2004

MAR 22, 2006 11:18 AM

Frank said:
reluctance to turn into a pod person.



Because Sony is so counter-culture?

sickboyedd

sickboyedd

United Kingdom
January 2004

MAR 22, 2006 11:23 AM

RadiantEnergy said:

Frank said:
reluctance to turn into a pod person.



Because Sony is so counter-culture?



Yeah, I refuse all music player culture and have a german oompah band follow me around playing the songs I want to hear. tongue

13Jack

13Jack

USA
September 2004

MAR 22, 2006 11:29 AM

sickboyedd said:
Yeah, I refuse all music player culture and have a german oompah band follow me around playing the songs I want to hear. tongue


Those Germans don't work cheap. I'd need a band from a more impoverished nation. That's the global economy for ya!

xlascaux

xlascaux

I'm lost
September 2005

MAR 22, 2006 01:12 PM

itunes is still too low quality to really care anyway. if you're downloading from itunes you're getting ripped off.

Daeman

Daeman

France
December 2005

MAR 22, 2006 01:14 PM

Actually that is only one part of the law that was passed, and the rest is much less glorious. It ends the right to make private copies of DVDs, and it has prison sentences for authors of filesharing software if they happen to be used mainly for sharing copyrighted files...
It's really a mess, not an example for others to follow. As the law stands, it isn't remotely possible to put it into use without contradicting oneself.

bean

bean

STAFF

Los Angeles, CA

MAR 22, 2006 01:23 PM

seanbonner said:
There's a good deal of back and forth following this with people speculating that iPod sales would go up because people would be able to play music they didn't buy from iTunes or rip themselves, but that isn't likely to convince Apple it's a good idea.


Maybe that's because those same people said Apple would sell more copies of its operating system if they licensed it and that the resulting popularity of the OS would offset the drop in hardware sales. When they went ahead and did that, it nearly killed the company. Apple has proven over and over and over again that the only people that know what's best for Apple are the ones making decisions at Apple.

bean

bean

STAFF

Los Angeles, CA

MAR 22, 2006 01:24 PM

Malgolad said:
Actually that is only one part of the law that was passed, and the rest is much less glorious. It ends the right to make private copies of DVDs, and it has prison sentences for authors of filesharing software if they happen to be used mainly for sharing copyrighted files...
It's really a mess, not an example for others to follow. As the law stands, it isn't remotely possible to put it into use without contradicting oneself.


Thank you for pointing that out. Before we start cheering on this legislation for one aspect of it, it's worth taking a moment to look at the other provisions it puts into place.

s5

s5

STAFF

San Francisco, CA

MAR 22, 2006 01:34 PM

seanbonner said:
Much the same way that Apple has pushed technological change by dropping SCSI or pushing USB, if more governments follow in France's footsteps Apple will eventually have to accept that people don't want companies mandating what they can do with their own music.



If you don't want Apple telling you what you can do with your music, don't buy from their store. Buy the CD and rip to MP3 yourself. Not only do you get legal digital music, but you get a built-in backup solution (the original CD) for all your music.

jrave

jrave

Italy
January 2004

MAR 22, 2006 01:47 PM

i buy some music from iTunes, then just convert it to an audio CD. no more DRM. and then it's backed up. and able to work on more than just the iPod.

sixbysix

sixbysix

United Kingdom
December 2004

MAR 22, 2006 01:53 PM

Fi-diddle-di-dee, une vie d'un Pirate pour moi-arrr ARRR!!!

(note: I think I read the title and ran with it rather than read the article. sorry)

Tangus

Tangus

Chicago, IL
November 2005

MAR 22, 2006 01:54 PM

the first thing I thought when I saw the headline was:

"LE YARRRRR"

ARRR!!!

PointBlank

PointBlank

New York, NY
November 2004

MAR 22, 2006 02:00 PM

s5 said:

seanbonner said:
Much the same way that Apple has pushed technological change by dropping SCSI or pushing USB, if more governments follow in France's footsteps Apple will eventually have to accept that people don't want companies mandating what they can do with their own music.



If you don't want Apple telling you what you can do with your music, don't buy from their store.


I don't remember that being the response to Sony's ill-fated DRM.

bean

bean

STAFF

Los Angeles, CA

MAR 22, 2006 02:52 PM

PointBlank said:

s5 said:

seanbonner said:
Much the same way that Apple has pushed technological change by dropping SCSI or pushing USB, if more governments follow in France's footsteps Apple will eventually have to accept that people don't want companies mandating what they can do with their own music.



If you don't want Apple telling you what you can do with your music, don't buy from their store.


I don't remember that being the response to Sony's ill-fated DRM.


Sony's ill-fated DRM was invasive malware and was built into CDs from certain artists, meaning you couldn't get hard copies of those albums anywhere that didn't include the DRM. It's slightly different.

seanbonner

seanbonner

NEWSWIRE

Los Angeles, CA

MAR 22, 2006 03:17 PM

If you don't want Apple telling you what you can do with your music, don't buy from their store. Buy the CD and rip to MP3 yourself.



Mandating how people have to buy their music, and in what format is hardly a solution. If I buy something legally, be it at a store on CD, online from iTunes, or online from from someone else I should be able to listen to that song on any device I own and not be told "oh, you bought this from the wrong online store so you can't play it on these devices"

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