digital music/video
03/17/2006, 4:30pm, EST
Friday, March 17th
France amends authors' rights law
As of yesterday iTunes had escaped the French Authors Rights Law, which after heated debate was passed by France's National Assembly and left digital content distributors free to impose DRM restrictions on music sold online. Today, however, amendments to the bill would offer rivals access to the previously exclusive file formats which form the core of Apple's music business model, forcing the company to make its FairPlay DRM work with competing services and players, according to the Associated Press. Lawmakers in the lower house voted to approve the amended bill early today, and will hold another formal vote on Tuesday next week before sending the law on to the Senate for its final reading. While critics of the bill say legislators have no right to force Apple to share its proprietary format, consumer groups are arguing that customers will have real choice only if restrictions are lifted. "It's an essential condition for consumers and for the market itself," Julien Dourgnon said, a spokesman France's primary consumer organization, UFC-Que Choisir.
Filed under: industry
Other story tags: digital music/video
, 
, 19
, 
, 
, 
, 
, 
Top
subscribe to comments
for this article
And why is no one talking about the fact that it should also force other DRM music providers to make their music work on the iPod. Hell, they should make it work on the Mac and Linux while they're at it.
Let the mark decide...
AAC is an open format.
AAC isn't 'open' in the sense that its in the public domain. Its owned and copyrighted and patented and all that stuff by people, and must be licensed before use. You know, just like MP3 is.
Fairplay is closed and proprietary, which is what apple uses as an 'enhancement' to the AAC spec in order to DRM it. Therefore, the iTMS uses a proprietary and closed file format.
Oh, and as I understand it, the bill isn't geared towards Apple specifically, so it would allow the consumer the right to buy from napster and transfer it to play on the ipod.
Actually, its apple who doesn't want this, as well. Because it would be relatively painfree (and free) to support WMP formats, since MS licenses them at no cost to ALL comers. They're format is more open that Apple's is, in fact, since anyone can use it. Apple just chooses no to in order to keep their monopoly going...
Uh, it's open in the sense that it's an internationally-ratified standard that has public specs that can be purchased by anyone with the proper dollar amount.
This is unlike other formats that can only be provided by a single source that keeps the format and anything that produces it as essentially a black box.
"Open" doesn't mean a gnu-style free license.