More Euro countries enter battle over iTunes DRM
France, Germany, and the Netherlands are all teaming up with Norway to pressure Apple into opening its iTunes music format for the sake of compatibility, according to news reports.
Compounding Apple's existing troubles, three of the most influential European nations have now said that they too supported Norway's pursuit of the iPod maker over concerns that its proprietary FairPlay protection scheme was violating antitrust laws.
The stepped-up rhetoric began on Monday, when Norway's lead consumer ombudsman Bjoern Erik Thon imposed a deadline on the Californian company. The industry watchdog took Apple to task for limiting the use of songs bought from the iTunes Store to only its iPod player, demanding that the company broaden compatibility with other devices by October or else face court time and fines.
"It cannot be good for the music industry for them to lock music into one system," he said.
Thon also made the surprise revelation that France and Germany were now involved with forcing Apple's hand in the matter. The former country's UFC-Que Choisir and the latter's Verbraucherzentralen equivalent have quietly backed the attempt to loosen Apple's grip on the iTunes ecosystem, citing the same reasons of fair competition.
This news alone appears to have magnetized the issue and turned it into a popular cause, as the Netherlands' consumer protection agency said on Thursday that it would look into Apple's practices in its own country for the same reasons as its European and Scandinavian forerunners. Agency spokesman Ewald van Kouwen claimed to have been directly "inspired" by Norway's fearlessness and justified the Dutch response through common sense.
"When you buy a music CD it doesn't play only on players made by Panasonic," Kouwen declared. "People who download a song from iTunes shouldn't be bound to an iPod for the rest of their lives."
Apple has so far only begrudgingly acknowledged the mounting cases against it. The Cupertino firm told the Associated Press through its spokesman Tom Neumayr only that it was aware of the problem and that it hoped Europeans would promote a "competitive environment that lets innovation thrive," a not so subtle allusion to its belief that opening FairPlay would hurt iPod sales.
Norway first discussed penalties against Apple in August of last year. Denmark and Sweden have supported the cause since then, but were not joined by supporters outside of the northern territories until the recent announcements.
Compounding Apple's existing troubles, three of the most influential European nations have now said that they too supported Norway's pursuit of the iPod maker over concerns that its proprietary FairPlay protection scheme was violating antitrust laws.
The stepped-up rhetoric began on Monday, when Norway's lead consumer ombudsman Bjoern Erik Thon imposed a deadline on the Californian company. The industry watchdog took Apple to task for limiting the use of songs bought from the iTunes Store to only its iPod player, demanding that the company broaden compatibility with other devices by October or else face court time and fines.
"It cannot be good for the music industry for them to lock music into one system," he said.
Thon also made the surprise revelation that France and Germany were now involved with forcing Apple's hand in the matter. The former country's UFC-Que Choisir and the latter's Verbraucherzentralen equivalent have quietly backed the attempt to loosen Apple's grip on the iTunes ecosystem, citing the same reasons of fair competition.
This news alone appears to have magnetized the issue and turned it into a popular cause, as the Netherlands' consumer protection agency said on Thursday that it would look into Apple's practices in its own country for the same reasons as its European and Scandinavian forerunners. Agency spokesman Ewald van Kouwen claimed to have been directly "inspired" by Norway's fearlessness and justified the Dutch response through common sense.
"When you buy a music CD it doesn't play only on players made by Panasonic," Kouwen declared. "People who download a song from iTunes shouldn't be bound to an iPod for the rest of their lives."
Apple has so far only begrudgingly acknowledged the mounting cases against it. The Cupertino firm told the Associated Press through its spokesman Tom Neumayr only that it was aware of the problem and that it hoped Europeans would promote a "competitive environment that lets innovation thrive," a not so subtle allusion to its belief that opening FairPlay would hurt iPod sales.
Norway first discussed penalties against Apple in August of last year. Denmark and Sweden have supported the cause since then, but were not joined by supporters outside of the northern territories until the recent announcements.
Comments
I'm not paying for songs that have built-in limits, while downloading Limewire songs or converting CD's to MP3 do not contain those limits.
DRM = punishing fair buyers = encouraging them to get songs the illegal way = bad for the industry including Apple.
People are buying more and more songs the legal way. The next step for Apple is to start trusting their (potential) customers.
Clearly a result of strong lobbying...
Why not:
"People who buy Xbox games shouldn't be bound to an Microsoft gaming console for the rest of their lives."
Duhh.
(and you can still burn CD's (and even rip to mp3) from your iTunes library)
Silly.
Clearly a result of strong lobbying...
Why not:
"People who buy Xbox games shouldn't be bound to an Microsoft gaming console for the rest of their lives."
Duhh.
That is not an equivalent thing at all.
The reason you can't play an Xbox game on another console is because the Xbox represents a hardware platform that Microsoft consider to be state-of-the-art at the time of development to trade-off retail price, performance, and profits. Games then have to be written to target that hardware platform to obtain decent performance, and this requires considerable effort.
A music player on the other hand, is much more of a generic platform. Any player on the market is technically capable of decoding AAC (even if the manufacturers haven't implemented an AAC codec, they could if they wanted to), and therefore the only thing stopping them playing iTunes Store downloads is FairPlay DRM.
Whilst licensing FairPlay may do Apple some damage, it is difficult to deny that Apple being forced to licence FairPlay would be good for the consumer.
Now, surely no one could say that is anti-competitive could they?
BTW: I wonder what the IT policies of those European Governments involved require their Government Departments to use in the way of PCs; surely we won't find any of them restricting them to Windows-only PCs will we? Now that would be anti-competitive!
The stepped-up rhetoric began on Monday, when Norway's lead consumer ombudsman Bjoern Erik Thon imposed a deadline on the Californian company. The industry watchdog took Apple to task for limiting the use of songs bought from the iTunes Store to only its iPod player, demanding that the company broaden compatibility with other devices by October or else face court time and fines.
"It cannot be good for the music industry for them to lock music into one system," he said.
It gets tiresome hearing the same misrepresentation over and over. Burn your tunes
to a cd, then re-rip the tunes to mp3 and load up your generic player. Nobody is
prevented from doing this. It is just comparatively inconvenient. Apple should not
be required to make the use of competing hardware as convenient as using its own.
What does the music industry think about DRM? It is my understanding that, at the
time they agreed to let the iTunes store sell their property, they insisted on some
type of DRM. Why don't the European consumer people target their actions on
the music companies?
Plus, I consider it dishonest for the consumer ombudsman to make his argument
as if his motivation were to help the music industry. It is his job to be an advocate
for consumers, not industrialists.
1) the songs will play on any Mac or Window's PC
2) The songs will play on any CD player
3) Re-encoding at a higher bit-rate, say 256+ mp3 or wma will preserve the quality of the 128bit AAC and be playable on any mp3 player.
It also continues to ignore the point that DRM is forced on the sale by the record companies, NOT APPLE!!!!.
FairPlay was pioneered by Apple as THE MOST OPEN DRM out there. It does allow fair-use. Is it open use??? no but there is NO requirement for open use.
I agree that this if being lobbied by those who simply can't compete with a great solution. And, I'm sorry, but it is typical of Europe to go after any successful american enterprise with gov't backed approaches - Airbus.
"It cannot be good for the music industry for them to lock music into one system," he said.
How much do you want to bet that the music industry is completely behind this (perhaps with buddy microsoft's backing too) - check it:
The music industry (in America at least) backed down from trying to charge more per song - because Apple was the game in town.... Apple said no, they backed down because Apple runs the game for leagal music downloads...
Now the music industry seems to not care that much at all about DRM - surprising? They want to wrangle control from Apple, so that they can charge whatever the hell they want... and now that Microsoft says it will pay a fee for each Zune sold (wonder how many millions that's been so far
And people, please for the love of god stop with the rediculous analogies! Yes you can buy gas from any station to power your car, but you can also only buy xbox games for the xbox (and not PS or nintendo), so anyone can make an analogy to present their idea...
DRM sucks, but the DRM Apple has implemented I'm okay with. Up to this point Apple has been very good about striking the balance between legal music, and looking out for the consumer (songs are still 99¢). Apple made the iPod, they made their iTunes system.
It gets tiresome hearing the same misrepresentation over and over. Burn your tunes
to a cd, then re-rip the tunes to mp3 and load up your generic player.
But then you loose additional quality from a file of already dubious quality. To maintain quality, you have to rip back from CD with a lossless format, which takes up a lot more room than a 128 kbps file. At the moment, I'm not too perturbed by FairPlay because I can remove it with no quality loss (i.e., generate an un-encrypted 128 kbps AAC from a FairPlay AAC), which enables me to listen to the tracks on my iPod, Sony W810i and Roku SoundBridge rather than just my iPod.
If the ability for me to remove FairPlay disappears, I'll be pretty pissed.
I agree that this if being lobbied by those who simply can't compete with a great solution. And, I'm sorry, but it is typical of Europe to go after any successful american enterprise with gov't backed approaches - Airbus.
Really? So can you name the European companies that this legislation is trying to protect?
If Apple were to loosed this fight, what's to stop these countries from forcing Apple to let OSX run on non-Apple hardware? This will be a fight to the death. I don't see Apple relenting on this one bit.
I remember hearing something to that effect shortly after Apple announced they were switching to Intel processors. Not with Europe, but some analyst saying that Dell could sue Apple because of that....
But you're right. Where does it stop.
You want quality , buy a music CD and import any song you want in any format and in any bitrate with two notable exceptions , WMA and Ogg .
Honestly , your excuse about the consumer rights is just hogwash , it all about you and what you want and it has nothing to do with competition or whatever excuse you want to post . Here is a simple fact of life , there are billions of people who have no iPod or any mp3 player whatsoever , in fact, they are more content on listening music on a CD or cassette player and their radios than getting a high tech music device such as an iPod . The people who complains ITMS the most are those who think that everything should be given to them freely or as cheaply as possible.
Really? So can you name the European companies that this legislation is trying to protect?
I didn't say they were protecting any existing company, did I. That's the current problem, there is no successfuly, or marginally successful company again Apple/iTunes at this point. I believe there is/was a similar effort in the Search space where France was going to Nationally fund a Search alternative to Google.
In any case my point is the stated reasons for the actions are false which leads one to suspect the motives and forces driving this effort. Is it convenient to use something other player, not really, but that's something for a competitor to do, if they think there is a market. Regarding the need for lossless, this is again an audiophile's argument. I've done just high-bit rate, as I stated, and hear no significant degredataion. This is, of course, subjective, but could be cured if Apple were required to offer 192 kbps songs. (again subjective, I know. I don't really want to drag this off to the 'I can hear it' thread death).
France, Germany, and the Netherlands are all teaming up with Norway to pressure Apple into opening its iTunes music format for the sake of compatibility, according to news reports.
Compounding Apple's existing troubles, three of the most influential European nations have now said that they too supported Norway's pursuit of the iPod maker over concerns that its proprietary FairPlay protection scheme was violating antitrust laws.
1. Close Norway iTS (can't be selling that much anyway)
2. Add full TV, Movie content to the rest of the European iTS' to reaffirm usefulness
3. Wait for the 'lobby-to-reopen-the-Norway-store-because- we're-being-singled-out' to start campaigning
4. Re-open the Norway iTS (nah! just kidding, keep it closed!)
The stepped-up rhetoric began on Monday, when Norway's lead consumer ombudsman Bjoern Erik Thon imposed a deadline on the Californian company. The industry watchdog took Apple to task for limiting the use of songs bought from the iTunes Store to only its iPod player, demanding that the company broaden compatibility with other devices by October or else face court time and fines.
"It cannot be good for the music industry for them to lock music into one system," he said.
Wrong Bjoern! It's the only approach that has worked, in fact you could say we didn't have a (legal digital download) music industry without it, and now you want to break it! - MS's open-architect DRM failed and even they have moved to a proprietary system!
"When you buy a music CD it doesn't play only on players made by Panasonic," Kouwen declared. "People who download a song from iTunes shouldn't be bound to an iPod for the rest of their lives."
Which precisely why CD sales are slipping and P2P theft is rising to the point where 80% of music player users think it's 'OK'
Can any other iTS location which makes a negligible creative contribution to the global music industry and hence has nothing to lose please sign up!
McD
(where's the pro-DRM lobby and why doesn't iTunes DRM my ripped CDs?)
How much do you want to bet that the music industry is completely behind this (perhaps with buddy microsoft's backing too) - check it:
The music industry (in America at least) backed down from trying to charge more per song - because Apple was the game in town.... Apple said no, they backed down because Apple runs the game for leagal music downloads...
Now the music industry seems to not care that much at all about DRM - surprising? They want to wrangle control from Apple, so that they can charge whatever the hell they want... and now that Microsoft says it will pay a fee for each Zune sold (wonder how many millions that's been so far
I could believe MSFT was behind it more than the music industry in general. It would be very
self-destructive for music companies to remove DRM and then try to raise
prices. Legal downloads would plummet and piracy would sky rocket, wouldn't it?
Come to think about it, MSFT would be harmed by the DRM removal precedent also.
It would apply to the ZUNE ecosystem also. (i had a big laugh attack when I typed
"ZUNE ecosystem"
MSFT much, except for their credibility (milk spits out my nose
You want quality , buy a music CD and import any song you want in any format and in any bitrate with two notable exceptions , WMA and Ogg .
Yeah, if I want the whole album (or most of the tracks), that's the best option. But if I want only one or two tracks?
Does the concept of a minimum acceptable quality make sense to you? If 128 kbps AAC is your minimum acceptable quality, you don't what to go under that, by definition. Re-compressing 128 kbps with any lossy codec, at any bit-rate, will result in additional quality loss.
Honestly , your excuse about the consumer rights is just hogwash , it all about you and what you want and it has nothing to do with competition or whatever excuse you want to post .
You think it's just me who doesn't like DRM?
Here is a simple fact of life , there are billions of people who have no iPod or any mp3 player whatsoever , in fact, they are more content on listening music on a CD or cassette player and their radios than getting a high tech music device such as an iPod .
So? I said that Apple being forced to licence FairPlay was possibly bad for Apple (I actually think it would be good for them in the long run, but that's a different debate), and definitely good for the consumer. You have failed to demonstrate otherwise.
The people who complains ITMS the most are those who think that everything should be given to them freely or as cheaply as possible.
Please explain how my reasoning implies I want things for free? I want to pay for my music, and then be able to play it on any device I choose, without having to compromise file size or quality.