"only if the restrictions they impose are "additional to, or independent of, those explicitly decided by the copyright holders,"

Are these copyright holders the artists themselves or the record company's? Its a big difference when Apple and MS have to re-negotiate the terms for France. In Europe the copyright holders are the artists, the company's have the publication rights, not the copyrights on the artwork.

France is on the right side of this, backing artists and consumers over media corporations.

I'm afraid I can't drink the Cupertino Kool-Aid on this one.

Vivendi, the French-ownerd, ex-water utility, now multinational, media & telecoms conglomerate owns & operates the following:

• Universal Music Group (yes, that Universal) • Group Canal+ (the leading producer of pay TV channels in France) • SFR (number 2 mobile communications network in France ) • Maroc telecom (number 1 mobile & fixed line provider in Morocco) • holds 20% of NBC Universal

The French consumer will suffer for the inordinate lobbying power of Vivendi.

I think fishtech is right. Reading between the lines, this may very well be the kind of xenophobic chauvinism for which the French are well famous. It wouldn't be surprising if the net result in some way favoured French content providers and of course, not ultimately, the consumer!

You see, the problem with the French is that they generally suck.

Why don't they go after Microsuck and their complete monopoly on the desktop?

Pussies!

Do we need ad baculum attacks on France? I'm in favor of interoperability for music files. I think the iPod can hold it's own against other players, and iTunes wipes up the competition for stores and user experience. What I fear the legislation will do, though, is open a loophole for piracy, thereby making the record labels, more than Apple, uncomfortable with selling songs in France. As for the French being remiss in not going after a much more insidious monopoly, well, do you remember the U.S's consent decree against Microsoft? How well has that worked out?

Let's not forget that the other option still on the platter is to pull the french iTMS. I don't know what the revenue from that particular store is, but I think we can probably see a big drop in legal music downloads in france with this change with a rise of more piracy.

Apple will pull the iTunes music store from France. Let them scrounge up there own music, most likely through pirating. Apple does have the right to its intellectual property for the companies well being. And the music labels are not going to let any music be sold online without DRM included so Apple has no choice. France can kiss iTunes Au revoir!

Oh, and Apple created iTunes for the artists and not for the music labels. But unfortunately Apple has to work with the music labels to get the music online. Apple hardly sees anything as far as any profits from the music store. They make there money on the iPod. And compatability is a two way street. Right now Apple is the only online music store that works for Macs and PC's. Microcrap, Rhapsody, Real, and all the others are PC only via IE6 to even reach there stores. If the french want to target the online stores for compatability 99% of them are not Mac compatable at all. You can't get there with a Mac because of IE6 which conveniently is not made on the Mac platform via microcrap.

The big losers in this stupid law they passed are the French people. Because thanks to there stupid ignorant law makers, iTunes will be closed and you can't order music from iTunes from another country. So there own people will be forced to piracy as Apple has already responded to that fact.