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State Sponsored Piracy? Both a truth and an irony
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| From Google News A proposed French law that would force Apple Computer to make the songs it sells through its iTunes music store playable on devices that compete with its own iPod amounts to "state-sponsored piracy," Apple said Wednesday. France's lower house of parliament passed a law Tuesday that would require digital content providers to share details of their rights management technologies with rivals. iTunes songs are protected by Apple's FairPlay technology and are incompatible with most non-iPod players. The bill, designed to prevent any single music-playing technology--and hence, any one media seller or device maker--from dominating the online market, now moves to France's senate. "The French implementation of the EU Copyright Directive will result in state-sponsored piracy," Apple said in a statement. "If this happens, legal music sales will plummet just when legitimate alternatives to piracy are winning over customers. iPod sales will likely increase as users freely load their iPods with 'interoperable' music which cannot be adequately protected. Free movies for iPods should not be far behind in what will rapidly become a state-sponsored culture of piracy." Well, huh. Since the beating that Microsoft took over just having media player software bundled in its OS, did Apple really think that they would just get away being so 'uncompetitively unfair' or some stupid phrase like that? It probably didn't help that they are an American company, it also probably didn't help that Apple is forming almost a monopoly with the IPod, because the only monopoly's allowed in Europe, especially France, belong to the government. Indeed, if Apple was a French company, you would expect to see it nationalised by now. Then again, if Apple was a French company, the IPod would have a charge time of 15 minuits, only accept the songs it felt like, then take six weeks leave when it was feeling like it, and finally go on strike if it did over 35 hours on a four day week. Though more seriously, I would say that Apple would cease to sell ITunes in France well before it actually had to implement this idiotic scheme, it still brings to light the inanity of the French parliament - with unemployment at 10%, youth unemployment at 20%, and minorities at 40% unemployment, you would really think they would have more sensible things to be legislating. Like legislating themselves out of existence. |
| Posted by Anonymous at 2:36 PM |
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