US backs Jobs in France
p2p news / p2pnet: Through commerce secretary Carlos Gutierrez, the US is right behind Apple boss Steve ‘I want it all’ Jobs as the latter bitterly protests France’s 296 – 193 vote in favour of a new copyright law that will effectively turn his DRM (digital rights monopoly) into EDRM (enforced digital respects management).
Apple will be compelled by French courts to disclose information to allow third party software applications to play music bought on iTunes, possibly closing the self-funding iPod promotional vehicle down in France.
Gutierrez says he’ll study the law, passed by the French parliament’s lower house this week and which must now be ratified by the Senate. But, echoing the standard entertainment and software cartel line, “any time something like this happens, any time that we believe that intellectual property rights are being violated, we need to speak up and in this case, the company is taking the initiative,” AFX News has him saying.
The French decision must be doubly galling to Jobs because it may also stymie his efforts introduce a hard-core marketing scheme he’s been highly successful with in the US, into France.
Under it, Apple gets into major teaching institutions with Apple iPods and iTunes, which are spuriously presented as important teaching aids, and which are promoted and sold on Apple’s behalf by unpaid school staffs
In the US, Duke University was to the fore with Stanford close behind. And it doesn’t stop with iPods. In Kutztown, New York, for example, students are forced to use Apple laptops. Whether they want to or not.
Now Apple has started a “collaboration” with the first French teaching unit to do the same.
Under the terms of the two-year partnership, Apple will work closely with a business school near Versailles on, “integrating iPods and other digital technology into classrooms and curricula,” says Businessweek Online.
For Apple, the hookup with the “prestigious” school is the, “first step in a plan to penetrate business schools and other institutions of higher learning across Europe,” says the story, adding:
“And what of that pesky new French law, which could require Apple to disclose its proprietary copy-protection schemes and let iPod owners download songs from services other than iTunes? In a press statement on Mar. 21, the company called the new law ’state-sponsored piracy’.”
But at the start of the press event to announce his bid to use French schools to weasel his product into the French educational system, “officials said they wouldn’t comment on the potential impact of the law on Apple’s French business,” says Businessweek Online, adding that, when pressed on what a potential Apple pullout from France could mean to the iPod/iTunes deal, Pascal Cagni, “who runs the company’s European unit couldn’t avoid answering”.
He, “smiled wanly, glanced down, and then said with a sigh, ‘I just don’t know’.”
Back in the USA, ZDNet’s David Berlind recently re-defined DRM as CRAP, or “Cancellation, Restriction, and Punishment”.
Also See:
AFX News – US commerce secretary backs Apple over French law , March 23, 2006
Duke University – Stanford U joins Apple sales, November 5, 2005
forced to use – ‘Bye-bye books, hello iBooks, August 19, 2005
Businessweek Online – Apple Loves France, Sometimes, March 23, 2006
recently re-defined – Apple and its C.R.A.P., March 4, 2006
March 24th, 2006 at 2:14 pm
I do not see how this is remotely respectful of the rights of citizens. The French law does not allow circumvention where the owner of the communications device would have their legal rights to be in control of what they own protected. All they did was pass an amendment that made their draconian implementation of the 1996 WIPO treaties just a tiny bit more consistent with established European law on software.
See http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/2028 for some links to European law.
The amendment allows various DRM authors who treat the owner of communications as the attacker to interoperate with each other. This is great for the DRM vendors, but still just as offensive to the property rights of the owners of these devices. It still circumvents the creative rights of most software authors, including those who author Free/Libre and Open Source Software, who will still not be able to author software that is compatible with any of the DRM systems.
People shouldn’t be surprised by Apples disrespect of the rights of their customers, and their attempt to use any means possible (some of which either are or should be illegal) to push their product. The major difference between Apple and Microsoft is not their morality or belief systems, but their achieved level of success.
March 25th, 2006 at 11:07 am
“Gutierrez says he’ll study the law, passed by the French parliament’s lower house this week and which must now be ratified by the Senate.”
Which only means that the cartel lobbies do really have good connections in the Bush admnistration, to the point that the Bush administration drops the ball on very important issues to dedicate their time to help out the lobby corporations.
No wonder Katrina. The Bush administration was too busy helping corporate america.
Beside, what right of intervention do Americans have in France?
France is not Iraq.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com