[GRLUG] Itunes and France

[Ron Lauzon]

David Pembrook wrote:
> Has anyone been following and bothered by this whole mess of France
> trying to force apple to give away its technology to competitors?
>   
Yup.
> Personally, I think they should just pull out of France. Who's going to
> do business there if they can't control their own intellectual property.
>   
It's not about "intellectual property" (which is still an oxymoron to 
me).  It's never been about "intellectual property".  DRM has nothing to 
do with copyright and "intellectual property".

It's about control and customer lock-in.  Pirates laugh at DRM and break 
it in a few days (or figure out a very easy way around it).

What Apple has done is create a system where they can effectively lock 
their customers into buying an iPod.  Once you've made an investment in 
iTunes you have to keep buying iPod products to use that investment.  
Because Apple refuses to license their (very misnamed) FairPlay 
technology, they have effectively built a monopoly.  And, according to 
the people who have complained about the quality of their iPods, that 
monopoly is just as abusive as Microsoft's Windows monopoly.

Unfortunately, it looks like, once again, France is in retreat.  The 
version of the law that they are passing allows for large loopholes and 
really isn't anything for Apple to worry about.

> I'm not a fan of how Microsoft does business, but do we need to sue to
> get the inner workings of the SMB protocol for samba to work better?
>   
Unfortunately, yes.

Most companies would view products that were compatible with their 
products as a benefit - since it increases the value of their products.  
Unfortunately, in this day of "intellectual property", companies want to 
own ideas completely and view anyone making something compatible as a 
"lost license sale".

-- 
Ron Lauzon - rlauzon at acm dot org
   Homepage: http://7lauzon.home.comcast.net/
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Microsoft Free since July 06, 2001
Running Mandriva Linux 2006