Monday, March 27, 2006
France Sticks It to Apple
Posted by Brendan Goetz in "CONTENT" @ 04:00 AM
"On Tuesday, the French parliament passed a law that would require digital content bought at any online store to be playable on any hardware. The law would be applicable to all hardware and service providers, but the immediate impact would be on Apple and iTunes, and may prompt the company to withdraw from France."
I am generally against any kind of restrictions being placed on digital content. It would be nice to be able to replace an iPod with an Archos and not have to re-encode an entire library. That is probably the main reason I don’t buy mp3s from iTunes. I think its great that France is coming down on the side of consumer rights and fair use (that, and cheese, make two things France and I agree on), but ultimately I think Apple will just pull out of the market. Now, if the U.S. were to pull a stunt like this….
I am generally against any kind of restrictions being placed on digital content. It would be nice to be able to replace an iPod with an Archos and not have to re-encode an entire library. That is probably the main reason I don’t buy mp3s from iTunes. I think its great that France is coming down on the side of consumer rights and fair use (that, and cheese, make two things France and I agree on), but ultimately I think Apple will just pull out of the market. Now, if the U.S. were to pull a stunt like this….
