For those who have not heard of the Apple vs French Government controversy, here is a quick run down on what’s been happening.
French parliament has been mulling over a bill that, if made law, would require that Apple’s iTunes allows French users to download songs that would play in all portable music players, not just iPods. One solution for Apple would be to start offering mp3 downloads, which are compatible with all digital music players.
By a 296-193 vote, French lawmakers moved Tuesday to require Apple and other digital-entertainment companies to make downloadable music files playable on all portable music systems, including those made by Roxio, Creative and other Apple competitors.
France is doing this, in support of fair-use rights for their consumers. Under these rights, consumers are allowed to use their licensed-media, how they wish, where they wish, on what device they wish. Fair-use rights are often trampled by copyright-enforcement, as we have seen a lot of in the United States and apparently France is more defensive of consumer rights than our own government.
Apple responded to the vote results today by saying this move by the French government would, “result in state-sponsored piracy”, since the only way for Apple to make such a thing happen, would force them to remove their copyright encryption, allowing iTunes music to be shared straight to P2P networks, or allowing customers to share it with more friends than Apple’s RIAA-influenced opinion deems acceptable.
Obviously, Apple has lost complete touch with reality on this one. It was long believed that Apple and Microsoft were different in almost every way, and Apple could appreciate, more than anyone perhaps, that copyright is not always, well, right. Copyright sure has never aided Apple in preventing Bill Gates from stealing their work and profiting billions from it, so why should Apple defend it so heavily now?
It seems Apple and Microsoft are no more than oppisote sides of the same coin. At the end of the day, all that really matter is money, and Apple knows that if the most popular legal music downloading service ever carried a universal-codec in their files, then competitors may be able to pull some of the market-share away from the iPod.
Apple’s stance here has nothing to do with piracy, if anyone should love music-piracy, it would be Apple. Most people who are purchasing ipods are playing mp3s downloaded from services such as Limewire, not aac files downloaded from iTunes music store, therefore, Apple profits highly off of music piracy.
Apple remains unafflicted and unaccused of this for the simple reason that their product can be used legally. Can we not apply the same concept to users downloading music from iTunes that is unprotected? If they purchased the music, then their fair-use rights are in affect and they have every right to use it legally, however, Apple insists users will jump into a “state-sponsored piracy” because there will no longer be any encryption to manage over the files.
Amazing how Apple is making a mint off the iPod, a product which gained popularity most accredited to the trading of music over unauthorized P2P networks (something they call piracy), yet refuse to allow french consumers to download unprotected music from iTunes.
In conclusion; when it comes to huge corporations, their technology can be given the benefit of the doubt, that it will be used for a legal purpose, but when it comes to the consumer, they are automatically untrusted.
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isnt all business centered around money?
Once again France is the only one making sense on all this. Think about it: if you are old enough to remember vinyl records when you bought one didn’t it play on ALL record players? I mean there weren’t some that played only on an RCA record pla yer others that played only on a Phillips etc. Maybe you’re old enough to remember tapes? If you bought a cassette did it only play on a General Electric tape deck? O.K. how about CD’s? I hear they’re still selling those some places. You don’t need a special pla yer for each record label do you? The same goes here. Apple and Microsoft stop fucking around. Anyone who buys one of your limited play MP3’s is a fool as far as I’m concerned. It seems that common sense has been lost in our advance into the 21st Century. France thank you for some sanity.