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.