If I was Apple, that’s what I would do, should the French enact a new piece of legislation. I would not market them in France. I would not sell them in France. I would not support them in France. I would not sell any iTunes to French customers. Let’s find out if the French want iPods enough to break their own idiotic laws.
From today’s NY Times (reg req’d):
Maybe I do not quite understand the situation, but what is wrong with competition?
Since when have iPods not been able to play others downloads and formats?
And isn’t that more to do with the limitations placed by the other online stores than by Apple?
And why is this French law stupid? Isn’t this ensuring a free and open market, or don’t we believe in that any more?
Uhhhh they do.
ipods will play mp3’s from any source, and are capable of handling an aac as well. If there is some protection standard on the competing service that make is difficult (it is never impossible) to get the file onto the ipod, that is not an Apple problem.
At least the French are consistent in their demands for competition in computers and software. They hammered Microsoft, too.
Waverly, the French want to make it Apple’s problem. iPods cannot play .wma files, nor can iTunes format-shift protected .wma files (without thrid-party add-ons). So if you buy a tune on MSN, your iPod cannot play it.
My gripe is with the French (and the whole EU regarding Windows) telling US companies how to do business. [I have the same issue in reverse; I’m just not aware of any examples, likely due to the fact that the US media wouldn’t report it]. The French would be telling Apple, if the legislation passes, that they must license .wma and that they must update their players to play protected media in forms other than .aac. Why should Apple, which dominates the mp3 player market, be forced to accept playing music from competing services?
I guess if you want to do business in a country, you have to play by the country’s rules.
Since when do companies not have to follow the rules of the country they’re in? The French get to tell US companies how to do business because those companies are operating in the French marketplace. If Apple doesn’t like the law, they can just not sell there anymore.
Because they think it’s an unfair restriction of trade otherwise.
Since forever, and no, not really; the reason iPods can’t play offerings from other stores is that they support only Apple’s “Fairplay” DRM scheme, which Apple refuses to licence. A lot, one might cynically note, like Microsoft refused to licence or document some of their proprietary APIs. As a result, pretty much every other download store uses Microsoft’s DRM scheme (which is easily licensed), and one can only play downloads from non-iTunes sources on an iPod if those downloads are free of DRM. Similarly, one can only play iTunes downloads on an iPod. Given that Apple holds a vast percentage of the markets for both players and downloads, this lock-out is significant, and detrimental to competition.
I completely agree, and think that the iTunes/iPod closed shop has been ripe for some anti-trust investigation for quite a while now. That said, I take issue with passing a law to compel an action from a specific company; that doesn’t seem to me to be how fair and even regulation should work. There should be regulators set up and standards agreed for fair competition, against which Apple should be judged - simply for a parliament to decide to force a particular move seems capricious and arbitrary.
As Captain Amazing says, countries have the right to regulate their domestic markets. Do you really believe that foreign companies operating in the USA should be exempt from regulation? This would be madness, handing a huge competitive advantage to foreign companies. The playing field has to be level.
It’s not. It would require all players to play other companies’ formats. iPod is just the most prominent company to be affected.
So, Polaroid should be forced to change their technology to accept all film? Competing razors should be forced to accept each other’s blades? All vacuums should be forced to have universal replacement bags? Even a vacuum that boasts new technology and does a better job because of its design?
Yes, the French are free to do whatever they’d like. But this is just plain dumb. If people find the Apple product to restricting they don’t have to buy it. And this opens the door for someone to come up with a competing Apple-like device that gives them more flexibility. France, meet the free market system.
I’ve no opinion about this law, didn’t even heard about it, have no clue about how I-pods work and don’t download MP3.
But I’m a complete loss to understand the issue you have. All countries tell foreign companies how to do business. All the time. For thousands of reasons, valid or not. For instance let’s assume I produce unpasteurized cheese and want to sell it in the USA. I can’t. If I want to sell cheese, I must change my production processes and sell pasteurized cheese instead. The US goernement just “told my french company how to do business”.
Had you complained about how stupid the law was, I would have understood (actually I wouldn’t have because I know nothing about Ipods), but this particular issue you have seems plain non-sentical to me. You always have to adapt your product so that it will conform to whatever laws exist in the country where you intend to sell it. If you don’t want to, you just don’t sell it there. That’s quite straightforward, it has always worked this way, it’s done all over the place, in every country for nearly every product (because you’ve pretty much always some sort of local regulation you have to conform to, regardless of what you sell, from teddy bears to drugs).
So… huuhh??? 
Isn’t refusing to license their stuff the kind of practice that resulted in Apple being second banana [heh] in the personal computer market?
That is France’s perogative. Which is why, if my name were Steve Jobs and I ran a company called Apple, I would walk away from directly marketing or selling the French market if they passed such a law, and I would offer no support to the French market.
Neurotik, you are correct. This would theoretically affect any mp3 player manufacturer who ties their product to a proprietary source. I, however, do not believe this to be an unfair restriction of trade, for the same reasons that magellan01 listed. Apple’s refusal to license Fairplay is not a restriction of trade (IMNSHO).
By the way, this thread taught me something, because I envisionned to buy something to listen MP3 at some point in the future, and it wouldn’t have crossed my mind that Ipods could be used solely to play some specific formats bought from a specific place anymore than it would cross my mind that a hi-fi would play only Sony music or CD-Roms bought in a specific shop. I somehow assumed they would work with anything. I wouldn’t have asked, and probably nobody would have thought about telling it to me.
And while I’m at it, what is a DRM scheme? A copy protection scheme?
They probably will do exactly that since the French market is not a big enough prize to make Apple seriously reconsider their entire business model.
Understandable. In my haste, I didn’t flesh out my objections.
My issue is not with a country demanding a product meet the importing country’s safety/environmental/etc. standards. My issue is with demanding a company support its own competition. The French would be demanding that Apple accept its competitors products, and that its competitors be able to accept Apple’s products. This really only affects Apple, because iTunes/iPod is the only truly closed market. Most every other .mp3 player will play encrypted .wma files, and I’m sure they would love to add Fairplay-encrypted .aac files to their format library. I’m sure Apple could add encrypted .wma support, but given Apple’s dominance in the .mp3 player market, why should it not steer online music consumers to its own store? To me, that’s the same as demanding that Peugot must build its cars to also accept Renault parts.
DRM stands for Digital Rights Management. It’s to prevent everyone from sharing all their online purchased music with everyone and his/her grandmother. Motivated people can find workarounds.
Online music stores, for the most part, sell music in encryped .wma (Windows Media) format, except for iTunes, which sells encryped .aac format.
An iPod can play unencryped .mp3 files with no problem, and iTunes will convert any unencryped .wma files automatically. It will not play .wma, though. The iPod also supports other unencryped file formats.
Other mp3 players will usually (almost always) play encrypted .wma files, but not encrypted .aac files. I’m unsure if any online music store sells in other than those two formats (encryped .wma or encrypted .aac), other than a Russian one which does not honor the copyrights on the music.
You know, America also has laws much like this one. For example, movie studios used to own a lot of movie theaters. Thats why you still see a lot of historic movie palaces called the Fox or the MGM. But then that practice was determined monopolistic and studios had to get out of the movie distribution and showing business.
We are particularly sensitive to any monopolistic practices involving the media because the free press is so essential to democracy. Let’s say, for example, that there is a shortage of cheerfully colored plastic, and the only place we can get it is Uzbekistan. Now let’s say that some odd and hard-to-trace lobbying groups are pushing really hard to invade Uzbekistan. Some people suspect it may be Apple computer, but it’s hard to tell. Why? Because the podcast has become the most popular source for news, and Apple distributes the bulk of podcast listening devices and they’ve made it so that anti Apple podcasts can’t be played on any of their devices.
Far fetched? Maybe. But there was a time when you would have been laughed at for saying the oil industry would soon have significant political capital. In order to prevent tyranny, we must always remain vigilant for the structures that would allow tyranny to flourish.