With Apple's big success with taking over most of the music download service and portable audio player market, the last thing they want to see is something threaten this. Well, in France, the lower house of the French parliament had passed a bill that would require the opening up of all proprietary formats such that one store's DRM can be made interoperable with another player's DRM. If this bill is passed, for Apple this would mean that they would have to open up their DRM such that tools could be made to convert the DRM format to another that suits the user's player.
As expected, Apple has responded angrily to this and claims that this would result in increased piracy, since when a tool strips the DRM off a song to add another, the song becomes unprotected between the two processes, much like during the time when an item out of one safe and put it into another. While Apple claims this would put their iTunes music at increased risk of piracy, apparently they claim it will likely improve their iPod sales as consumers would no longer be restricted on what they can play on it. However, they also expect the piracy of movies to dramatically increase also as they claim the DRM for these will not be adequate enough either.
Unfortunately, due to how strong Apple is against licensing out its proprietary FairPlay DRM technology, there is a good chance Apple will withdraw its iTunes service from France completely if this bill passes, particularly if only France decides to make this move. At present, fewer than 2% of Apple's iPod and iTunes sales are in France, so moving out of France will unlikely have any significant effect on its business. Thanks to yronnen for letting us know about the following news:
|
Apple's dominant iPod works with songs purchased on iTunes -- the dominant online media store -- and with tracks that are not copy protected, but it doesn't play songs that are protected by Sony's or Microsoft's digital rights management software and sold through non-iTunes services. |
It is a pity the original proposal to allow restrictive DRM to be legally circumvented has been done away with as it is coming to the stage where companies are simply abusing DRM, while at the same time having little, if any affect on actual piracy. In fact, chances are that if music stores would do away with DRM restrictions altogether, they would likely get a drastic increase in customers, particularly those who previously would have stayed clear of DRM crippled music. For example, while some music labels are upset with the Russian music download sites offering music in the non-restrictive MP3 format, they seem to be doing very well.
Probably the music labels and organisations should start investigating their actual sales figures rather than just look at the piracy risk. For example, there has been news about the RIAA complaining about how the Russian AllOfMP3 service is increasing piracy, yet they don't appear to be looking into their sales figures, which I would imagine are growing rapidly due to them actually taking into account all the features the consumer is interested in. However, at least by France forcing companies to open up their DRM for 3rd party companies to use means that as long as one's player is DRM complaint to any codec, there will likely be a tool to convert DRM protected content to match the DRM on the player, assuming this bill passes. However, those who have players that lack DRM support altogether will be left out regardless of this bill.
yronnen added: Ok, this is definitely a law which is good to consumer, otherwise Apple wouldn"t react the way it did. The piracy claim is rubbish, of course, since the DRM feature will still be there. It just that Apple will have to share piece of the pie...
Source: ZD Net News - Software
