We touched on the Norwegian anti-Apple hysteria last week and it appears that once again the local media are fanning the flames in hope that more anti-Apple sentiment will emerge. Already Netherlands has answered the call ‘ no surprise there, it always hates any kinds of restrictions placed on its citizens ‘ with a consumer protection agency calling for an end to Apple’s closed DRM.
Last week Norway said its Ombudsman was likely to take Apple to court over it’s the fact that iTunes music only plays on an iPod, saying it is against Norwegian law, giving it until the end of September to fix the problem.
This week the Dutcch Consumentenbond has filed a formal complaint with the Dutch antitrust watchdog calling for an investigation and the removal of the limitations in Fairplay which prevent iTines content playing on another player. Previously there have been complaints in Germany and France.
We said at the time, and will repeat it again here and we’re sure we’ll be forced to repeat it again – this comes down to just Apple bashing, because all these countries have either created legislation or are under a European directive to create legislation in line with the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, as it is embedded in the World Copyright Treaty.
This has all important protection for any content that is encrypted and makes it a legal breach to interfere with such copy protection. So also making it illegal to include any such copy protection is just not going to make it into the statute books of any sane country, and across Europe there will be an enormous amount of cross border pressure placed on any government that tries to go down that route.
When this type of singling out of Apple was tried in France, as it debated its own new law, action was averted at the last minute by the senior lawmakers changing the wording slightly.
Nowhere can we create one law for Apple that doesn’t also apply to other suppliers and if Europe wants out of DRM regimes then they must cancel the WCT directive and repeal its laws. The only way that is going to happen is if the US repeals the DMCA itself or Europe breaks away from the World Intellectual Property Organization.
The idea of enforcing open interoperable DRM has been tried in France, but this relies on consumers complaining to a central authority in numbers, and Apple always has the option of leaving that country.
Apple was prepared to walk away from France and close its operations there, and in Norway there is a population of just 4.6 million people, compared to France’s 61 million. Why should it make any difference in a country like the Netherlands that has 16.5 million people.
More hot air and unworkable Apple bashing. If consumers really didn’t like it they would buy Sony or Microsoft players, which also have no interoperability built into them, or those from any number of Far East low priced operations, with each offering access to the very same music.