Apple DRM problems grow
p2p news / p2pnet: Apple’s consumer control problems are escalating. Fast.
When France seemed set to introduce a new law that would have forced Apple to let iPod owners download songs from services other than iTunes, Steve Jobs said it amounted to, ‘state-sponsored piracy“.
More recently came news that Norway’s Consumer Council of Norway was claiming iTunes breaches fundamental consumer rights, and a couple of days later, “Apple Computer’s iTunes online music store could be shut down across Scandinavia,” said the Financial Times..
Now, “As the outcry in Europe is spreading, there is some opposition to Apple’s business practices in the U.S,” says BusinessWeek Online, going on:
“A group called the Free Software Foundation carried out protests on June 10 at seven Apple retail stores in cities that included New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Seattle.”
“Defective by Design” protests are aimed at Apple, “as well as other companies the foundation thinks are supporting a growing trend toward legal restrictions that bind digital content to particular playing devices.”
Elsewhere, in Europe, “Apple is facing hassles over the same compatibility questions, as well as its pricing structure in Britain, says BusinessWeek Online, pointing out that iTunes songs there go for 79 pence, or about $1.45, against the .99 euros (about $1.25) charged elsewhere in the European Union.
“We know that prices in Germany and France are lower,” it has Alena Kozakova, principal economist at Which?, a British consumers’ advocacy group, saying.
“There is no justification of this because the product is virtual. The traditional way of justifying this is that property and wages are more expensive in Britain and therefore products should be as well. But because this product is virtual this cannot apply.”
Apple’s DRM (Digital Restrictions Managagement) is C.R.A.P., says ZDNet’s David Berlind.
Digg this story.
Also See:
state-sponsored piracy – Apple: foiled in France, March 28, 200
consumer rights – Norwegian iTunes victory, June 8, 2006
BusinessWeek Online – Now It’s Europe vs. Apple, June 12, 2006
David Berlind – Apple and its C.R.A.P., March 4, 2006
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June 13th, 2006 at 4:36 am
Has any one heard if these rulings possably also apply to m$ fairplay C.R.A.P or will the law makers “win” by chasing apple out of the Scandinavia leaving “farplay” as the ONLY option for record cartel music?