[GRLUG] Itunes and France

[adderd at kkmfg.com]

> Has anyone been following and bothered by this whole mess of France
> trying to force apple to give away its technology to competitors?
>
> http://www.playfuls.com/news_03269_France_vs_Apple_iTunes_should_become_open_source.html
>
> 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.
>
> 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?
>
> I'm done ranting lol..
>

I'm not normally a fan of France but anything a country can do to stick to
either Microsoft or Apple (and preferably Apple) is fine by me. And all
France is doing is forcing Apple to allow their encrypted tracks to be
played on non-apple hardware. It seems reasonable enough to me. Encryption
shouldn't be a company's golden ticket to lock-in. I know that Apple is
loved by a lot of geeks (why I may never know... It's Microsoft in
disguise) but you and I both know that plenty of people would be up in
arms if Microsoft did what Apple did (Microsoft does allow all sorts of
players to play WMA files.) What I'm sick of are geeks that get up in arms
about everything that Microsoft does but yet bow at the altar of the
mighty Apple. You can't have it both ways.

I might have more sympathy for your position if Apple were being forced to
give up the schematics for an IPOD but this is just allowing music bought
from Apple to be played on other players. I think Apple can allow that
much!

So, now I'm done ranting.