You are most likely familiar with France and its so called iPod-law by now, but to those of you who’ve managed to miss out on this we can tell you that they’ve decided to test whether it is possible to force companies to make the music they sell compatible with all types of music players, not just their own. This will of course mainly affect Apple and its iTunes Music Store together with its iPod. A law that, among other things, force Apple to share its DRM technology with other manufacturers, have earlier been submitted by lawmakers and been approved by the leaders, but now been dismissed by the Constitutional Council since it goes against the property right, and the right to protect one’s property, found in the French constitution.
Now the law has to be revised or they will have to come up with a whole new proposal. You simply can’t force a company to do this without offering them some sort of compensation, although the demand for a market wide compatibility still stands, so Apple has very little to cheer about.
They also dismissed the reduced fines for regular people, about the same amount as a regular parking fine. The fines for big-scale filesharing have always been at the same level and they saw that you couldn’t make an exception for regular users as they both commit the same crime, although to a varying extent.
