French Plan to Open iTunes?

[ftaok]

This news item doesn't make any sense. What does "format" have to do with device? Unless, the way I'm reading it, is that the French want Apple to license Fairplay so that, for example, Creative could make a player that plays iTunes-purchased songs.

And that's where the article is poorly written (and poorly researched as well). The author states that the proposed law would force Apple to open iTMS and allow iTMS music to be loaded onto non-Apple mp3 players. But nowhere in the article does the author follow up on that. Instead, the rest of the article is about cracking DRM and converting formats.

Where has journalistic skills gone? Is it too much to ask for a properly written piece, even if it's just on the Internet?

BTW, the French politician's quote is quite amusing. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, being as English probably isn't his first language. Here's what I'm talking about, "It will force some proprietary systems to be opened up ... You have to be able to download content and play it on any device..."

Is he saying that if I download the latest Warrant album, that I should be able to play it on my toaster? After all, a toaster is a device. Aggh, I'll give him a break and assume that he means device=mp3 player.

 

[boncellis]

Whaaat? I wasn't aware I couldn't convert my iTunes downloaded music to another format? (correct me, please, if I'm wrong) That dissappointing. I guess im going back to cd's and ogg vorbis. If this is true though, bye bye iTunes France.

I believe you can burn purchased tracks to CD, then import them in iTunes in whatever format you wish. It's an extra step, and an added expense (buying the CDs) but essentially the same. I defer to someone else's knowledge on any quality loss in this process though.

 

[rockthecasbah]

That law would be rediculous! Apple doesn't force people to download their music from their PROPRIETARY source. If they choose to be a purchaser from the iTunes music store, they are accepting the format in which it is downloaded and the products with which they will (or will not) work. What happened to France's Laissez-Faire attitude of yesteryear?

 

[obeygiant]

Apple may have to resort to military action if France does not comply. Apple has already sanctioned their iTunes.

 

[FoxyKaye]

+1 for France on this one. a great law we need here in the US that we'll NEVER get.

Boo-yeah, kudos to Mindy on the catch! (very old Simpsons/tomacco episode reference).

I'm happy somebody's doing something about DRM - I wonder if it would also apply to iTunes video material as well?

YAHOO! Let the piracy resume!

Yeah, there's that too.

Though there was this same debate when the VCR was released, dual cassette decks, CD burners and a host of other read/write devices. Mass piracy, the kind of which the music studios and Hollywood always wave in front of everyone when DRM discussions come up, strikes me as really hard though. Yes, ripping a movie with a videocamera in the theater and distributing it 3 DVDs for $20 is possible, as is ripping them directly from CSS-encrypted DVDs, but the en-masse operations that really take a chunk out of profit always seem to get busted in the end. And besides, how many copying services will blithely duplicate DVDs without a license, which means mass piracy is a DIY operation.

Sure, folks are always going to use peer-to-peer for file swapping, but there always seems to be some sort of counterbalance with bandwidth and quality. Frankly, it has been my experience that P2P networks kind of suck. Corrupted files, purpously misnamed files, more porn than a human could read in a lifetime, connection timeouts and losses, and poor quality music files abound. At some point, it's just easier to buy the song directly from the online store and/or a CD than to waste time on P2P. And if you're doing P2P on a modem, then you really waste time - especially if your selected MP3 winds up to be corrupted, a JPEG with an add-on MP3 extension, or an entirely different song altogether.

In short, it seems like Hollywood and music studios are creating a panic that blows the realities of piracy way out of proportion. The DRM such as iTunes music store uses isn't going to stop massive piracy efforts, just make fair use a PITA for the end user.

 

[(L)]

In terms of power to the people on this whole DRM shmaz, it's OK...but what about Apple? Is it moral to be able to force companies to provide a product a certain way? Does France have a ban against Sony's proprietary formats? Fine if you can convert it, but I think Apple should be able to provide its products the way they want them, and if that means playable on iPod without tweaking, fine...if users want it badly enough and will convert it themselves, fine...but force them to support competition and potentially hurt the cooperation of the media giants? That seems a bit out of line for a government.

 

[crees!]

6 Words

Leave it up to the French.

 

[Steak]

Why is everyone so glad about this? The only reason these record labels give apple such open access is the digital rights management. If apple does not shut down the french iTunes music store, the labels will pull out.

So great, now people would be able to convert their files to any format, bypassing copy protections. The labels would leave, the store would have no music, and iTunes store is dead. Is that a good thing? I don't see how.

So, they would need to add more freedoms to the downloaded music, but as a result there will be no music available. Great job!

People don't have a RIGHT to download music. It is a service, offered by a company, which one can accept or not accept. They have no obligation to follow yours, ours, or France's rules. Take it or leave it, that is your choice. Laws like this will ruin the current availability of downloaded music, without a doubt. This is an attack on a company by the french government. No harm to them, since France has no music anymore, other than islamic prayer tunes. They want our stuff for free. Will not happen. If I were Jobs, I would pull the plug on France music store TODAY. I would let the current users know why, and let them bitch out their government. Why is it that socialists think that stealing is perfectly fine as long as it is stealing from a corporation? Stealing is wrong, and their is no way to justify it.

-Chris

 

[crees!]

I don't understand is what the French legislators are thinking. It's not like the iTMS is offering anything that you can't get in other formats. If the consumer doesn't like the "Terms and Conditions" that go with buying iTMS songs, then that consumer can walk to a store and purchase a CD of songs.

I'm sure the article only mentions Apple and iPods because of the dominant mindshare, but I'm assuming this would apply to all providers and products, right? Last I checked, Mac users can't play WMV10 files. Will Microsoft be forced to release the code (and/or DRM) so that people can convert WMV10 files? Also, all of the online music stores (except iTMS) use Microsoft's DRM. Will we Mac users have access to de-crypting the WMA DRM so that we can play them on iPods?

I see a whole can of unintended consequences being opened up here. Plus, I am guessing that Apple will have some untraditional allies (e.g. Napster, Microsoft) in the fight against France.

Ditto my East Coast friend. \m/

 

[crees!]

Why is everyone so glad about this? The only reason these record labels give apple such open access is the digital rights management. If apple does not shut down the french iTunes music store, the labels will pull out.

So great, now people would be able to convert their files to any format, bypassing copy protections. The labels would leave, the store would have no music, and iTunes store is dead. Is that a good thing? I don't see how.

So, they would need to add more freedoms to the downloaded music, but as a result there will be no music available. Great job!

People don't have a RIGHT to download music. It is a service, offered by a company, which one can accept or not accept. They have no obligation to follow yours, ours, or France's rules. Take it or leave it, that is your choice. Laws like this will ruin the current availability of downloaded music, without a doubt. This is an attack on a company by the french government. No harm to them, since France has no music anymore, other than islamic prayer tunes. They want our stuff for free. Will not happen. If I were Jobs, I would pull the plug on France music store TODAY. I would let the current users know why, and let them bitch out their government. Why is it that socialists think that stealing is perfectly fine as long as it is stealing from a corporation? Stealing is wrong, and their is no way to justify it.

-Chris

Doubly-ditto.

 

[iMeowbot]

Not every country is set up that way.

France is set up that way, as are all other countries where a law like this would make a big difference.

 

[elmimmo]

Not gonna happen with current EU laws. Cracking anticopy measures is as illegal as the DCMA says is, coming down from general EU directive (i.e. european law). It is not up to France not to comply with it.

It'd be nice if someone more in the know would enlighten us regarding how accurate this is.

 

[whooleytoo]

I suppose if you look at the European stance against Microsoft's monopoly position in the OS market, this stance by France (it rhymes!) is consistent.

 

[A0X0MAX0A]

Well, Apple has to decide if this will lower the amount of people buying iPods and switching to something else, or if they have the market just right, if the iPod is going to be something that even more people are going to buy. It will increase sales of the store I think, but I question if it is a good choice for the iPod itself...We also don't want the non-computer savvy people out there saying that their Apple+iPod is too hard to operate for some reason. I see it somehow coming to effect what Apple has done in a negative way; things might not be as simple, market share could go either way much easier than it can right now, etc.

 

[nicksoper]

Unlock iTunes

I'd sleep better at night knowing that should one day the iPod not be the best music player on the market, I can easily transfer my songs to a format that is supported by my new music player.

Its a shame that hymn-project.org doesn't work with the new iTunes.

Nicko

 

[macorama]

business opportunity!

So how long until some enterprising French people offer a service where they take your DRM'd music and give you back a plain old mp3, with the un-DRM-ing happening on French servers on French soil?

There must be some legal loopholes to exploit in there somewhere!

 

[macFanDave]

Au revoir, mes amis francais!

As much as I detest the idea of DRM, Apple's implementation, FairPlay, is as consumer-friendly as it can be while satisfying the soul-sucking greedy maw of the recording industry parasites.

Apple developed a small but loyal user base who bought into a monopoly of hardware and software from a single source. It's called the Mac. They applied this business model to digital music, even though it is a crowded and competitive field. Instead of appealing to the lunatic fringe (like me), it became the most successful system in the field. Apple won its dominant position in the field the right way and it deserves to be able to dictate the terms of use.

If France decides to go forward with this, the French people are going to use iTMS. And if that happens, je suis desolee!

 

[whooleytoo]

Well, Apple has to decide if this will lower the amount of people buying iPods and switching to something else, or if they have the market just right, if the iPod is going to be something that even more people are going to buy.

To be honest, the other MP3 player manufacturers are struggling to such a degree I don't think iPod sales will suffer at all. Personally I bought 2 iPods before the iTMS ever came out, and even if the store was wound up I'd still buy another to play songs ripped from CD.

What might be interesting though is if people go for niches that Apple hasn't filled. In spite of Motorola's effort, the mobile market still is wide open. Perhaps stereo components or set-top boxes which can play protected AAC natively. There's a lot of potential for expansion there.

 

[iMeowbot]

Not gonna happen with current EU laws. Cracking anticopy measures is as illegal as the DCMA says is, coming down from general EU directive (i.e. european law). It is not up to France not to comply with it.

That's what this is all really about, infighting over how (if at all) to implement EUCD. At the end of last year, the General Assembly in France tried to enact an EUCD implementation that was far more draconian than what the EU directive would require. This current bill is the backlash. If things continue on the current course, France could end up with two sets of contradictory copyright laws

 

[whooleytoo]

I believe you can burn purchased tracks to CD, then import them in iTunes in whatever format you wish. It's an extra step, and an added expense (buying the CDs) but essentially the same. I defer to someone else's knowledge on any quality loss in this process though.

If you rip them off the CD using the Apple lossless codec, there shouldn't be any loss of quality, but the file size will be much larger than the original protected AAC.

If you rip them using any of the lossy codecs (MP3, AAC, WMA) the file size shouldn't change that much, but the loss of quality should be noticeable as you're transcoding between two lossy formats.

 

[Bonte]

Why is everyone so glad about this? The only reason these record labels give apple such open access is the digital rights management. If apple does not shut down the french iTunes music store, the labels will pull out.

It affects all digital music stores in France, not only iTunes. Also games, HD movies and why not books (PDF's that can't bee printed or put on an other OS). This proposal has huge consequences so i doubt it gets voted.

 

[Avicdar]

I don't consider Apples DRM to be restrictive in any way. I know that the tunes will only work on my computer and my iPod. Knew that going in. There are other services where one can download songs in other formats, to play on other players if you don't own an iPod.

As someone else here said, doing anything that causes the content to disappear isn't good for anyone. If the labels sense that Apple making DRM free versions of the music available will hurt them, they won't allow their content to remain in the store - period.

 

[.Andy]

Good call France DRM sucks. As much as the industry wants to push it I'm not going to start buying the same content in different formats for each device I own. I'm going to buy it once and use it as many legal ways as I choose. They're aren't going to dictate to me where and when I'm going to watch/listen to content that I've purchased.

I'm sick and tired of buying DRM'd CDs that my computer can't play/rip and DVDs that are region protected. They can go after me if I illegal distribute your copyrighted material, but otherwise leave law abiding citizens alone and don't treat them with disdain from the outset.

If the record industry decides to pull up stumps from on-line music they'll only be hammering another nail into their own anachronistic coffins.

 

[deadturtle]

Apple may have to resort to military action if France does not comply. Apple has already sanctioned their iTunes.

viva la révolution!!!! I for one would march on Paris for Apple!

 

[nkgmd]

Why stop there?

Why not insist that all proprietary software be made available on all platforms? That way it will be manditory that all PC only software be ported to the Mac as well.

By the way, once you burn the Protected AAC files to an audio CD, they can be ripped back as any format and played on any device. It gives you a hard backup copy of your files and eliminates the DRM for pennies and a few minutes of time.