French lawmakers approved an online copyright bill Tuesday that would require Apple to break open the exclusive format behind its market-leading iTunes music store and iPod players. The draft law – which also sets new penalties for music pirates – would force Apple, Sony, and others to share proprietary copy-protection technologies so that rivals can offer compatible services and players. An analyst expects that Apple is more likely to leave the French market, than to open its format in France. My take: Just buy CDs. They play in every CD player, and have no weird restrictions. In case you forgot, CDs look like this.
“The draft law – which also sets new penalties for music pirates – would force Apple, Sony, and others to share proprietary copy-protection technologies so that rivals can offer compatible services and players.”
If it’s a choice between screwing over consumers or screwing over corporations, choose both! =D
OK, I have to admit that I don’t live in France, and I don’t know how all of their laws are set up. So, for all I know the lawmakers may be screwing everyone over. I don’t agree with your interpretation of the point you quoted though.
“The draft law – which also sets new penalties for music pirates – would force Apple, Sony, and others to share proprietary copy-protection technologies so that rivals can offer compatible services and players.”
If it’s a choice between screwing over consumers or screwing over corporations, choose both! =D
I don’t exactly see music pirates, or pirates of any kind for that matter, as consumers. If there weren’t pirates in the first place, there wouldn’t be any acceptance of anti-consumer practices by anyone other than extremely corrupt politicians, and even they would be careful to endorse something that there didn’t seem to be some reason to justify.
I think it’s good for a government body to try to protect the interests of the consumer/general population. I don’t know that France will be successful with the efforts they have and are making, but at least they don’t seem (from where I stand) to be fueling the RIAAs antics.
The fact is that new law, we have in france, allows the music companies to legally use DRMs and make the CDs unplayable on some CD players.
If we buy some unplayable CDs :
– we’re not allowed to “remove” DRMs (750 € and 3500€ for the one who provided the way to do it)
– we’re not allowed to donwload the mp3s (38€)
– P2p softwares automatically share the files (150€)
But this is just a small part of the law…
As we say in France :
We got the eyes to cry
Not even for personal usage? Wow, that’s nasty. Not to mention it’s a complete 180° from the situation about a month ago! I’m all for protecting IP, but not to the point where it tramples our rights. I do buy a lot of music, but I rather like to try out before making a purchase. I am rather lucky to be okay… for now, anyway.
It seems to me that many politicans are dismissing the popular reality, favouring corporate interests. Either extremum is bad and it seems we’re oscillating between both!
Ah, well. It’s not like it’s the end of the world. There’s always free software and the independant film/music industry. More and more people will eventually realise this.
A spokesman for Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, who backed the crucial amendments, dismissed suggestions that the bill would unfairly damage Apple
Apple bent over backwards to make it’s store available to french citizen and easily accessible. The competition still has got their 2 fingers stuck into their nose and the government decides to punish the successful one.
Sti qui sont niaiseux les politiciens francais. Crisse d’épais de socialistes.
Come on, lets take it easy.
Sont pas si niaiseux les politiciens francais.
Si y parlent d’appel c parce que c’est le cas le plus connus et un des seuls qui offre le service chez eux. Cristie sont pas pour fesser sur napster quand napster existe même pas en France!
Si y parlent d’appel c parce que c’est le cas le plus connus et un des seuls qui offre le service chez eux. Cristie sont pas pour fesser sur napster quand napster existe même pas en France!
And that makes it ok for the french gov. to take piss in Apple’s cereals? Everybody else isn’t making the slightest effort so the gov must run amok in the free market to compensate Apple’s sore losing competitors?
Apple doesn’t deserve this. They don’t deserve this cheap blow. Government should punish monopolies. Not corporations, like Apple, who push the envelope.
Apple is not really the issue here. While people are mainly talking about iTunes, it is evading the real purpose of the law : force the DRM onto consumers. This law is essentially in the same vein as USA’s DMCA and makes it illegal for people to circumvent DRM schemes. Even it said DRM scheme prevents people from exercing their fair use rights (private copy for instance).
The current french government is not socialist. If you even just slightly checked your fact before posting, you would know this. They are abviously not “niaiseux” (stupid) as you would believe since they seem to be successful in pushing a law that has very little popular support.
Why buy the whole CD for two or three songs? Most CDs have only two or three good songs on them. Buying them from iTunes is much less expensive. As for the quality not being as good? It’s impossible to tell in my car which is where I listen to most of my music.
Does anyone else view this as a sad direction for music to take? The tracks on a CD (from a reasonable artist) are not a random selection of songs…they constitute parts of a complete entity/experience. The current instant-gratification culture seems to have lost any previous depth.
Errmm….sorry if that was a bit of a diversion.
Finally someone with some artistic sense in the group. I found someone here I have to agree with.
But it is really hard to fight that instant gratification culture that we have now. Its the MTv generation, they say… sad.
What would it be to listen to The Wall, Sgt. Peppers or Tommy in a “per Music” fashion as people try to sell it now…
Well… Sorry for that… just felt like speaking it off my chest.
Yes, it’s sad, and the problem with the culture is acceptance of it. It is much more a business thing than an artist thing, as well. Off the top of my head, Lateralus comes to mind as a moderately recent and popular album that was made to be listened to from start to finish.
If there are only two or three good songs, then I don’t buy the album*. I also don’t buy lossy DRM music. As soon as tracks could be separated, there were people who only listened to a few–often, though, that few could be half the album (take a typical Steppenwolf or Pearl Jam album, FI).
IMO, as long as there are artists out there making real works, there will be those of us to buy them–we just have to have a way to be told they exist and be given a taste
.
* unless those two or three are huge: Passion Play comes to mind
consider this part of that post: when buying for more than a few songs, the prices for online stores are hardly worth it, too, considering it’s physical, not lossy, and offers a de facto backup.
Saying that American companies will leave the French market rather than adapting to French laws is nothing new. It’s a recurrent theme in French-bashing. The idea is that France is so irrelevant, it’s not worth adapting to.
My humble opinion is that it’s the role of the state to regulate the market just enough so that there is some healthy competition on the market. Hence a bill promoting interoperability makes sense.
That said, I don’t defend everything the French authorities do in copyright law. Actually the currently hot issue is a French transposition of the DMCA ! Yes, we’re going to have DMCA-like legislation in France. It’s called DADVSI, and it’s just as horrible. Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, our Culture minister, is very actively defending it, which is a sign that he’s sold himself to the media industry.
Edited 2006-03-21 23:30
And punishing the successful ones is good “regulating”?
There was no problem. Apple wasn’t locking out anyone from the digital music download scene.
Apple should move their service from France to Ukraine and/or Russia. They all have Cell phones over there. The market is ripe for the taking.
And punishing the successful ones is good “regulating”?
It’s not a matter of punishing. We’re not talking about justice, or morals, or anything like that. The point is, there’s a free market, and the state has to put some regulation so that it remains a free market. This is not at all specific to France, the same thing could happen in any capitalistic country.
it’s not about free market, it’s about in one hand protecting authors against pirates, and in an other allowing users to do what they want with a song they bought as long as it remains a private usage.
You are THE Cyrille Berger who contributes to Krita ? Thanks a lot for the effort you put in it!
Back to the topic…
There’s a lot of confusion about the laws that are currently being voted in France, because they do a lot of different things. There are the things that you mention, and there are also the things that I mention. They do both, which is confusing.
On a sidenote, the penalty for exchanging content by P2P is 150 euro, which is not so high. For people who, like me, make it a citizen duty to NOT respect the abusive copyright law, it means that I’ll do as much P2P as I like until they fine me 150 euro. After all it’s only the price of six DVD’s.
More worrying are the huge penalties against programmers who make P2P-like applications. The very fact of writing a P2P client is illegal. I think this makes France look like a fascist country.
@jacquouille
It’s not a matter of punishing. We’re not talking about justice, or morals, or anything like that.
Oh no. It is about morals. Nothing about free market or capitalistic. It’s a law based purely on emotions. And those are never needed. And will only end up hurting the successful, which in this case here is Apple inc.
Edited 2006-03-22 01:13
And will only end up hurting the successful, which in this case here is Apple inc.
I wish Apple takes its dirty feet out of France, and run out of business. I hate the Apple philosophy. I don’t feel it sexy at all. The iPod is the last thing I would throw money at. Useless ripoff.
http://www.geocities.com/peacemalion/iproduct.gif
Go back to Linux, you OSS fundie. No one cares about your and your drone’s worthless crusades.
I prefer Windows.
Yeah, sure, Ukraine and Russia. As if we had a tradition to pay for content here 😀
So? iTunes, current market hegemony in the field of digital msuic, faces the first of probably many monopoly based cases. What on Earth was anyone expecting?
iTunes is now, through being rather good and well designed at the task at hand, a monopoly in digital music. It now leaves the realm of “company done good” and finds itself in “monopoly” status. It has to abide by different rules.
These rules are there to protect us, not have us all worship: MS/Apple/Scott McNealy/<insert_other_wannabe_dictator>
iPod/iTunes is NOT a monopoly. Get a grip.
it’s a monopoly because of market share. Doesn’t make it an “illegal monopoly.” As I said, it got to where it is because of good design, however it is far and away dominating the digital music world, as are iPods. Them being _so_ forces them to operate under different laws…like opening up their closed off DRM mechanism.
What on Earth is there to get a grip about? I know fine well there are lots of DMS outlets. They are all scrambling for the crumbs left behind from iTunes. To make an example perhaps more saliant to this journal, there’s lots of OSes in the world, however…
@Mea Culpa
it’s a monopoly because of market share.
Market share != monopoly.
France just wants to get out of E-commerce. That’s what this is about. Apple and other companies have the right to sell products how they like with in reason, that’s what makes it unique.
Just remember to get the ones without spyware-laden DRM. In an environment where you can be hit up with penalties for disabling copy-protection systems, it’s best to take your money away from those companies who treat their customers with such contempt.
My take: Just buy CDs. They play in every CD player, and have no weird restrictions. In case you forgot, CDs look like this.
How quickly people forget the recent rootkit fiasco with Sony. Anyways, that’s besides the point. Why should I run out and buy a brand new CD for 30 bucks because I happen to like a single song on the CD…..even though I hate the rest? Doesn’t make much sense does it?
30 bucks? It may vary around the world, but that much? I mean, the average CD is about 15$ in QC… It’s about 25$ for an indie release, but they often worth it. I recently bought a Fantômas release for 28$ and it was coming in a spiral-bound package with a glossy calendar. Compare to newer releases which doesn’t even come with a booklet or artwork!
As for the lone song on a CD, perhaps you could expand your musical horizons. That’s what I did. Thanks to file-sharing, I have found what I like and now I’m a corporate whore. Well, that’s my suggestion, since buying lossy DRM’d music isn’t my cup of tea.
In italy the normal price is around 20 EUR, which is roughly 24 USD, and that’s if you happen to live in a big city with big stores. Otherwise add another 2-3 dollars.
What you get is a drm’d or otherwise crippled music disc which more often than not is *not* a CD as per the philips specifications.
They do not even have the “compact disc” logo on them (philips asked the record companies to remove it, iirc, because music cds nowadays are not cds anymore).
The rootkit didn’t affect me, or many of us out there who don’t use OSes that restrict what we do in the first place. While I’m not advocating switching to another OS, I am backing up the original poster in the fact that for many of us, CDs are STILL a viable option. I personally subscribe to a few CD per month places, where I queue up CDs to mail to me for a flat fee. Once a month, a new CD that was on my list shows up and it was much cheaper for me than iTunes ($5/CD). Especially since I don’t have any iTunes devices, and choose not to install iTunes on my system- which isn’t an option in OS/2 anyway. 🙂
For people living outside of France (like me actually) there is another huge controversial law being discussed now, about youth first employment. it sounds so abusive that it drew masses on the street to manifest against the project. All press attention was directed to that. so this davdsi law didn’t get enough attention for the public to rise against (although it would probably have not changed anything).
this is just blatantly revolting, some cops are gonna get paid to sneak into the net and identify people and fine them. making it completely LEGAL for CD makers to make unplayable CDs. ground is set for HD and BR …
as if we were not yet enough technology impaired
That’s why I get my online music at places like eMusic or Magnatunes. They sell have regular mp3 files, no DRM involved. Plays on virtually any portable player and any PC.
There are lots of places you can download music from and lots of different types of devices to download on to. I don’t see why I-tunes is a monopoly.
I don’t see why I-tunes is a monopoly.
No.
Try looking up the legal definition. You will find it easiest if you look up the one used by the UK Monopolies and Mergers Commission. It is market share greater than 25%.
Now do you see?
hahaha. no, they’re not that simple anymore, rare is a plain cd
I can do nothing else but crying for my free software community in France.
Yesterday the DADVSI law has been approved by the parliement. It makes guilty every user of a software that works around whichever DRM system.
Because they do work around DRM solution for many format, the use of these softwares is now illegal:
– vlc
– Mplayer
– Xine
– …
more here: http://www.videolan.org/eucd.html
Edited 2006-03-22 07:10
Everyone forgets that Apple has paid heavily to keep iTunes running (by hardly making any money off music sales). The only reason it gets by is because of the DRM the RIAA forces them to use. It’s not directly “APPLE’S” fault their DRM is locked to iTunes/iPods, that’s just the only way they can cover themselves and stay on the RIAA’s good-side. This has nothing to do with Apple “locking” compitition out of the market, it’s just how they chose to enforce their DRM. If it gives them an edge, then so be it. If you don’t like it, no ones forcing you to buy it.
Besides, as a company, why should I be forced to make sure MY product works with EVERYONE elses? Since when does Capitalism include “play nice with everyone”? In the long run, they are only hurting themselves by locking everyone out. But without Apple’s iPod/iTunes closed market, the portable MP3 market would still suck with an endless supply of crappy copycat players and crappy overpriced download services.
This seems to be a repeating situation over the last few years, starting with MS, where its all of a sudden wrong to bundle your own products and services with your own products. Heaven forbid someone elses product should fail for one reason or another.. Lets sue the company who isn’t failing and get our share instead of actually trying to make something better……..
CDs are made of plastics and aren’t really ecological in my taste :}
If you want to stay within the law and use a portable MP3 player then I don’t see how CDs are an option. From what I understand of the law (at least in Britain) it’s illegal to rip a CD even if it’s legally purchased and doesn’t have any DRM that needs circumventing.
According to a lawyer I talked to recently there’s not really any such thing as “fair use” when it comes to CDs, you simply aren’t allowed to make an unauthorised copy of the music they contain. Everyone who buys an iPod and then rips their own CDs to play them on it is breaking the law and they should re-purchase that music from iTunes.
The main difference between ripping your CDs and downloading music illegally is that you’re much less likely to get caught when using your own CDs. From what I’ve heard a number of companies are working hard on making it as difficult as possible to rip CDs, even if it breaks compatibility between those CDs and a lot of the hardware that plays them.
Overall buying CDs will not necessarily give you something that will play on every device without restriction, and it doesn’t give you a legal way of filling your MP3 player. Whether you decide that these laws are so utterly stupid that they should be ignored is up to you, but it doesn’t change the legality of it.
In The Netherlands, I’m allowed to make personal copies of my albums. I make copies on minidisc, and the law allows me to since I do not redistribute the contents.
In Germany, there’s also a slight fee included in the price of recordable audio media (MiniDisc, tapes, etc) that is distributed to the artists (GEMA). It was a measure back in the days when audio cassettes were new and everyone was scared that rampant copying would be the end of vinyl records (sounds familiar?).
Somebody needs to talk to the UK government (if what you say is true). From
http://www.direct.gov.uk/YoungPeople/CrimeAndJustice/TypesOfCrime/T…
“If you’ve bought a CD in a shop, you may want to copy the songs onto an MP3 player or make a copy of the CD.Generally speaking, you can make a copy for your own personal use, you will not be breaking the law. You can also lend the CD that you bought to your friends if they want to listen to it.”
This is just an attempt by a formerly powerful country to remain relevant.
It’s FRANCE
In the I.T. world thats roughly the equivalent of McDonalds in the world of haute cuisine.
While it may be easier to just buy the CDs, companies like Sony (and any others who implement evil rootkits) are starting a war that they CANNOT win. I put Jamie Foxx’s ‘Unpredictable’ CD in my PC with some “UNPREDICTABLE” consequences. I had written software for my PC which used the $$$ symbols in filenames (which Sony saw fit to use as markers as well) – rendering my Win98 implementation BROKEN!
I’ve written to Sony (and used much vulgarity in the message to get the point across) to let them know that I did NOT give them permission to install JACK – and that I will warn everyone I know to stay away from ALL Sony products. The fact is, if you can hear it with your two ears (or have the benefit of an 1/8″ audio jack) you can copy it. No technology other than complete digitization and individual monitoring will ever stop pirating, and frankly – until the RIAA pulls their heads out of ‘you know where’ people will pirate audio files while the CDs cost $20+. Anyone who knows how discs are made also knows that it costs less than fifty cents to produce an individual disc, and that VERY little of the price actually goes back to the real artists. Buy music DIRECTLY from the AUTHORS – skip the evil corporate middleman (who are usually just interested in the top 20 countdown), and you may find that there is a vast range of styles and themes you’ll never see on MTV or VH1, because they’re not paying the blood-sucking marketing giants.
But until then, Peer-to-Peer your brains out while you still can!
Just ignore iTunes, go buy your music from allofmp3.com
dang it, do these european countries have somethig against the U.S. first the EU is hounding Microsoft and now this. I don’t like the idea having the european countries trying to order the US based compies around. lets do some european takever and see how they like that it’s time to extend the U.S. some more.