Remember the French the next time you think of Apple.
 

I don't know if you guys have been monitoring the news about Apple lately or not but awhile back the French passed a law opening up iTunes to other players besides the iPod. This would in turn make iTunes nothing more than a pirates buffet. Read about it here. It did pass, btw.

Now, CEO Steve Jobs has sold off 45 per cent of his stock. Read about it here.

Steve Jobbs was reported to be considering pulling out of France altogether.

What do you think will happen to Apple when they pull out of France? It's starting to look like they will. You don't just sell 45 per cent of your stock for no reason. Thoughts?

Edit: I was unsure of exactly where to put this as it falls under many categories.

In advance of it's move... or not... :doh:

I got lost at this part. What exactly do you mean?

It means that iTunes will be forced to allow other media players to play songs obtained through iTunes. This in turn means that iTunes will have the capability to convert it's media to mp3 format, rather than the Apple-designed copy-protected format.

How can you force software to have a certain feature?

My legislating it. If Apple refuses to comply with this, then France can issue all sorts of penalties against Apple. And, as an (ideally) law-abiding corporation, it cannot just dodge this problem by refusing. Of course, all sorts of appeals can probably be done in the courts of France, but what they ultimately decide will have to be followed.

It's not just music, it includes all content. Music, TV Series (ie: Battlestar Galactica), basically everything. As a result, Apple is considering pulling out of France completely (computers & all).

And I'm all for it.

Apple is waaay too restrictive with their formats.

I mean, when you have 80% of the market, why in the hell do you need to bother making your product so that it can't work with anybody else's?

To maintain that 80% market. It's about the money. If I was in their position, I would do the same. What do you guys think this will mean for Apple in the future?

What do you think this will mean for French people as well?

And that's the difference between you and me. I am an honest man.

It won't mean much. Even if they pull out of France (which I'm not sure that they will), French customers will just turn to iTunes stores elsewhere in the EU.

iTunes has been able to convert files to mp3s since version 1.0

But that's not what this law is about. Technically, under French law ripping your cds to your computer is illegal, so the only music files you can legally have on your mp3 players are ones downloaded from legitimate online music stores. And by far the biggest online music store is the iTunes one. Since songs downloaded from iTunes can only be played on iPods, it's anti-competitive. The argument is that Apple use their stranglehold of the online music market to dominate the portable music player market.

Of course the fact that the iPod came along before the music store and iPods drive the adoption of iTunes eludes the French but ohwell.

Irrelevant. DRM-WMA is the standard for online music stores. Apple is going against the standard and they could care less about all the newbie customers that are getting burned - stuck either with a DRM-WMA music collection and an iPod that won't play them, or a DRM-AAC collection and an MP3 player that won't play them.

I heard that this was required for him to pay taxes on those shares or somesuch. Yes, that's right.

the iTunes/French Law case is not the worse

this same law forbids Open Source programs, all P2P programs, basically the law forbids the use of internet in france

there are some guys who made artwork with terrorist faces like "this guy uses VLC to read videos", "this pirate doesn't use windows media player", "this man has a website"

all here in french : http://m-bt.org/pic/avatars/

lol. thx a lot sharing that avatars link. Though I wish they use english instead french (I understand french a bit)

btw I have some thought that Microsoft actually give pressure toward France they capable of doing it you know. Some MNCs are actually stronger than a country.

Those avatars are great! I especially like "This man uses ADSL!", "This man has a website!" and "This man burns DVDs!"

Hello_Kitty, is France actually that stricts implying the rules to forbid downloading MP3? does that mean most of GFF users in France risk themselves downloading stuff from that ftp server? Well I heard from my dutch friend that people who uses p2p actually could be tracked by police and they must pay certain fee. totally absurd I would say.

It's very possible. They will track the mass transfers from your IP and if they catch you downloading illegally, they'll impose a fine on you. Some countries even throw you in jail. Technically, you're breaking the law.

Also, this hooded jacket is awesome. I want one of these.
http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/5939/0199cq.jpg

But that only implies to p2p users doesn't it? That means we are still safe... right?

Lol scarlet. I don't think I will actually wear one of them in middle of road.:lolsign: EVER.

I love how all the big corporations and the US Government are like "ZOMG THIS MEANS PIRACY BLAH BLAH". You could take the route chosen by Microsoft and just, you know, license your DRM scheme freely so others can use it?

The law is absurd : tools that allow you to download copyrighted content are forbidden, you can have a 350'000 € fee if you are a P2P programmer, or even if you tell someone you can use eHorse or BitRiver to download stuff, etc...

but the law also says "if the tools are for collaborative work, or exchanging files that arent copyrighted, then you can use them" :lolsign:

which doesn't mean anything, as with each program that allows you to share files, you can't stop people sharing copyrighted files

this law will be proposed to the European Commity ...

People in everycountry are subject to being traced by the police and arrested, i don't think this law will change much

News: Apple dominate both markets. They ARE the standard. That's like saying that Mac OS X is the standard OS and Windows is against the grain.

My spelling is correct. And if you're going to correct somebody's spelling, then damned well correct it - don't just point it out!

As to the rest of your post, don't make me laugh.

Dozens of stores use DRM-WMA. Hundreds of players support it.

Meanwhile, only iTunes uses DRM-AAC, and only the iPod can play it.

This is not like Windows vs MacOS. Why not? Because Microsoft does not make those other players and it does not own those other stores. They license WMA for a reasonable price and are reasonably content with their licensing fees; otherwise they'd be working on their own alternative to the iPod much more quickly than they are now.
Meanwhile, Apple is keeping FairPlay closed so that you must use iTunes/iPod together - with an iPod, the only online store you can use is iTunes; and conversely, if you shop at iTunes, the only MP3 player that will play your purchases is iPod.

Now go play in traffic.

Why can't Apple just get a hold of the proper MP3 player companies, give them the neccesary code to implement AAC support on their hardware and call it a day?
That's what I don't understand.

I don't understand why other companies can't do it themselves. Apple don't own AAC. Apple have their own audio compression, Apple Lossless and .mov, which iPod /iTunes also support. WMA on the other hand is owned by a company, Microsoft, it's no standard.

Apple didn't design their iTunes store to monopolise the market, they designed it to protect the artists rights, the same code that makes them iPod exclusives also prevents sharing of the files with multible computers. These measures were implemented to encourage record labels to license their music. This French law revokes this and Apple are worried it'll scare away record companies.

And Arrowhead, I wasn't pointing out your spelling mistake, you jsut happen to use the common grammatical mistake that I can't stand and immediately sets off my idiot detector.

Well, there's nothing stopping the companies that make DAPs to have AAC support. They just have to ask Fraunhofer about putting it in their players (this is essentially the same process as having MP3 support in their players.)

Remember, Apple doesn't own the rights to, nor is the creator of, the AAC filetype. They just promote it more.

As to Apple giving the Fairplay DRM to other companies? You're talking about a company here. By doing that, they'd mind as well just start giving iPods away, because if any other DAP can play their files, that means no need to sell iPods. This isn't a hard concept.

You're missing one big detail of Apple's business model.

Apple doesn't actually make much money off of the iTunes Music Store. Most of the money goes to the nasty record labels, and a lot of the money that's left over for Apple is eaten up by bandwidth and fixed costs. The idea behind the music store is that it will lead people to buy iPods, which are quite profitable for Apple. If any MP3 player could play music from the iTunes Music Store, then there wouldn't be enough incentive for Apple to run it.

Woah - get off your high fucking horse buddy. You may not agree with how the world works - but money makes the world go round.

Well, yeah, but from a business standpoint, it's not the best thing to just get rid of the one technical reason people should use your product.

AAC doesn't belong to Apple. FairPlay does. And they want to keep FairPlay iPod-exclusive as long as possible, because they'd prefer to make $200 profit per iPod than only make about $5 on licensing for other companies' players.

Double Post:
Agreed.

What people seem to have trouble understanding, though, is that just because stealing is easier than working for a living doesn't make it right.

Double Post:
It is when the consequence for fleecing them is years and years of mistrust and poor sales. But I guess nobody in Apple has any foresight.

Double Post:
Apple should concentrate on making a good MP3 player. 12 hour battery life? 2 hours for video? No mic? No radio? No WMA support? (Come on!)

What? Are the componests of iPods free now? And do retailers take 0% of the sale?

Hahaha what? iPods are responsible for some of the biggest corperate growth Apple have ever experienced. Do you suddenly think that iPods sales are just going to drop off the map? Is this foresight? The iPods had huge battery problems and copped a really bad repa few years back yet still they outsell everything and the iPod brand itself is synomynous with MP3 players. I daresay they're untouchable.

Do you seriously think that the iPod is bad?I understand that it may not be the best in the eyes of the must act different to feel superior crowd, but you can't call it a poor quality product.

Even if $200 is a pretty high estimate, you'll do good to check the country profile of ArrowHead.

Either way, main point stands, Apple don't make shit on iTMS.

Thank god I live in Canada, best damned country in the world by far..

In Canada, we can download as many files as we want.. So long as we dont share them. a notion was thrown in court, where downloading music was almost identical as your run of the mill, standard library.

Yes there are differences, but not as many as one might think. Anywhoo..

We gotta remember here, technology advances fast.. look at how that whole cell phones with cameras started.. When the first one came out, it was pure utter shit quality, then month after month.. It got better, and now we can have an Mp3 player/camera/video camera all in one phone..

My point is, whatever curve ball the 'companies' throw us, it's us the kids (or the next generation) of techonology that find ways to exploit, tinker and share the wealth with everyone..

my take on itunes is.. Yeah okay, you got an MP3 player that only plays your kind of file format.. Well go fuck yourself, cuz as long as I can get my other sources for that exact same file in a idfferent format.. Im happy.

Music files are generated from .wav files which can be converted into .mp3 files.
Software files revert into assembly language, which can be reversed and exploited.


iTune files are made specifically for one kind of player.. Well, lets think about how this appeals to me. What good is an itune file, when I got all these other types of files to choose from?..

TAKE YOUR ITUNE, and SHOVE IT UP YOUR.. *Ahem* bye

.dc