p2pnet - rss feed: French ’state-sponsored piracy’
p2p news / p2pnet: Steve Jobs says France’s decision to force him to in effect allow customers to use ‘product’ they buy from him on any player will promote piracy.
“The French implementation of the EU Copyright Directive will result in state-sponsored piracy,” Apple said in an e-mailed statement, states Bloomberg News. “If this happens, legal music sales will plummet just when legitimate alternatives to piracy are winning over customers.”
Bloomberg’s statement that “legitimate alternatives to piracy are winning over customers” is, of course, pure Big Four Organized Music cartel PR and in fact, the exact opposite is happening.
Hundreds of millions of people around the world are using independent sites and services, not to mention the p2p networks (see p2p research firm Big Champagne statistc on the left), and more go to them every day, driven there by the labels who, while they call their own customers criminals and thieves are themselves being investigated for price fixing and bribery.
Apple is already practicing corporate piracy via its CRAP DRM which stops people from making fair use of Apple downloads.
Yesterday French politicians voted 296 - 193 for a new copyright law. They’d previously approved changes to allow anyone in France to demand disclosures that will effectively end DRM. But Jobs won’t have to abandon his CRAP altogether.
Rather, “It will be forced by courts to disclose every piece of information that will fully enable third party software to play tracks bought on iTunes,” Ratiatum’s Guillaume Champeau told p2pnet.
It won’t, however, be legal to make downloads playable without respecting the rights restrictions, says Champeau: “For instance, free software could be created to play iTunes files, but you still won’t be able to burn the results more than five times.”
Meanwhile, “Apple and rivals such as Microsoft Corp. use different copy-protection software to prevent piracy, meaning song downloads from Apple’s iTunes can’t be played on Microsoft’s Windows Media Player and Apple’s iPod won’t play songs in Microsoft’s format,” says Bloomberg News.
Of course, piracy has nothing to do with it. The idea is to stifle competition - to make buyers to use a particular product, and only that product, whether they like it or not.
If the bill becomes law, Apple will probably shut down its iTunes store in France rather than having to open up its music format to competitors and change its business model, Bloomberg News has analyst Jonathan Arber saying.
The bill still has to be cleared by France’s Senate and as Champeau says, “They don’t have a reputation of being very progressive, but sometimes they surprise us.”
Also See:
Bloomberg News - Apple Says France’s Copyright Bill Promotes Piracy, March 22, 2006
CRAP DRM - Apple and its C.R.A.P., March 4, 2006
fully enable - France votes on iPod Act, March 21, 2006
March 22nd, 2006 at 3:40 pm
It’s not like we want it all in MS’s form anyway. It should be in an open standard, that anyone can use.
March 22nd, 2006 at 5:22 pm
I’m sorry but I find this all very funny.
Why? Because Jobs is turning into the MPAA/RIAA puppet boy. Apple’s a hw company so as long as he’s selling product he could care less how limited his customers feel.
I hope more countries pass laws that allows people to use legally purchased product as they see fit.
March 22nd, 2006 at 5:29 pm
Jon you must of missed this amendment to the copyright law now your so focused on being anti copyright
“In addition, the bill will make it illegal to develop, distribute or promote P-to-P (peer-to-peer) software for purposes other than collaborative working, research purposes or the exchange of noncommercial works”
http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/software/story/0,10801,109756,00.html
March 22nd, 2006 at 5:43 pm
“is turning into”
He turned into that a ling time ago.
March 22nd, 2006 at 11:00 pm
The technology does not distinguish between the exchange of non-commercial works and the exchange of the latest movie still in the cinemas.
This sounds very similar to the Grokster ruling - provided you don’t say “ALL THE LATEST STUFF FREE!!!” you should be okay.
March 23rd, 2006 at 10:28 pm
‘I hope more countries pass laws…’
They already have, its called copyright law. The problem is that the cartels get away with breaking it.
March 24th, 2006 at 2:43 pm
Indeed, foreign media focus on the part of the law that angers Apple, but the new french law also refers to the US supreme court decision over Grokster (which is weird as the one behind this decision in France says he does it all to promote the french “cultural exception” Vs the American copyright view), but in fact voted a pure transposition of the Induce act the Bush governement wanted to pass 2 years ago, with all the risks of chilling innovation in France like the Induce act would have had in the USA (in the same time, what’s innovative in France ?