France seems a bit divided on it stance against piracy and the last couple of weeks we’ve heard of a number of law proposals. The latest was accepted last Tuesday, a proposal that could be a real drawback to among others Apple and iTunes. The new law was accepted with the votes 296 for and 193 against, and hinders Apple and other companies from selling downloadable music with restrictions. Simply, no music being sold or downloaded in France can be limited to a certain software or hardware platform, something Apple has been making tons of money with through its iTunes software and iPod MP3 players. Only Apple’s products can play music downloaded from iTunes Music Store and this might become illegal now.
To Apple this is a disaster at best, a catastrof at worst. We are curious to know what Apple will do here, will it remove the DRM protection from its media ot simply close the French section? France make up about 5% of iTunes’ total sales.
If the draft becomes French law it will mean that firms selling music must make available information about the software they use to stop songs being copied – so-called Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems.
This is in fact a very interesting proposal that according to Apple will only benefit the pirates, but it seems to forget people are interested in using services that can be used with any product. Those who pirate do it already and those who buy music will continue to do so.
Source: BBC
