Mon Mar 13, 2006 5:21 pm

Let me get this straight... France needs a special law to make it legal to play a CD/DVD/music recording/video that you bought on another music/video player that you own?

Mon Mar 13, 2006 6:28 pm

Okay so France wants to legalize stealing from iTunes by breaking the DRM so it can give the copyrighted material to there own online stores and sell them there. Basically that's what there saying. If I were Apple I would close the online store in France and see how well the french do with there stupid law. My guess, not good, not good at all. The other way Apple could go would be to charge France for every song they sell on there own stores using iTunes DRM making it more expensive for the French to buy songs than any other country thanks to there stupid law.

Mon Mar 13, 2006 7:48 pm

Strange I understood that European copyright law was suposed to have been standardised a while back.

Mon Mar 13, 2006 10:25 pm

Maybe I am wrong about this but I thought that if you wanted to put music from the iTunes store on a different player that could play mp3's, all you would need to do is to burn a cd and then put the songs into whatever jukebox supported that mp3 player.

Tue Mar 14, 2006 4:06 am

"...

OR

France wants to boot out all foreign presence in that arena....and the labels would simply shut France out...

OR

this whole thing will get voted down.

My money is on the on third choice."

OR, it is just plain rumors and speculations. As said in the news, the main aim of the law is to transpose an european directive and better protect musicians and copyright materials against P to P downloading. But there were a lot of discussions around Internet economic models. Hence, it is very difficult to understand what the "side effects" of this law will be.

--------

( to answer to another contributor :

"To the point where the college students made a big protest against a law stating that teachers should be replaced when absent. .." oh.. i am wondering where you found this one. ...

"Old people riot against the reduction of their retirement income (provided by the government and sucking cash reserves dry)" ... old people rioting... dangerous people..; I didn't know i lived in such a bizarre country

kidding aside, they are just clichйs.... To be fair , i have to say the same kind (and even worse... ) clichйs are expressed in France against american people (a lot of things can be said about the America / France "communication" problem; misinformation is a part of it)

Tue Mar 14, 2006 11:08 am

First, let's get rid of the "To the point where the college students made a big protest against a law stating that teachers should be replaced when absent. .." The student in fact, protested in support for the teachers because the law would oblige them (the teachers) to replace their colleagues regardless of their other obligations and of their specialization. That law was just a cheap way for the government to keep the pupils in school without hiring new and needed personal.

OK, the least we can say, it's that that article is a splendid example of shoddy journalism, with a lot of baseless affirmations, and it is misleading. No surprise if most of you, left in the total ignorance of the context and the facts, would jump to extreme conclusions. No, France doesn't want to boot all foreign presence in that field (one of the majors, Vivendi Universal, is French, btw). No, the law isn't aimed at Apple and the iTunes store. The context is the EUCD (the European DMCA) and its implementation, and the law would just allows consumers to convert DRMd tunes to any format to play the music they bought where they want, how they want. And the majors are against it. This is just about private copy, consumers rights, and doesn't condon piracy or copyright infringment.

Tue Mar 14, 2006 12:39 pm

What about fair use?

Yes, you can go around iTMS DRM via CD, but that's a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA). It appears that France just wanted to clairfy fair use. Fair use is what allows you to record your LP onto a cassette without getting thrown in jail.

Most people feel that it should be fair use to rip a DVD to their iPod because its just like that cassette but the DCMA says otherwise.

I think it's great that France at least thought about it and said, look as long as it's fair use, lets not throw people in Jail for copying a song onto their el cheapo MP3 player so long as they purchased that song legaly.

Also, this would not just affect iTMS, it would affect any protected songs. It would not make it a crime to unprotected WMAs to play them on our iPods.

Finally, this is NOT a moronic law. I would like the same fair use rights for my digital media as I have for my analog media. If I copy and sell, it's illegal and I should go to jail. But should I go to jail because I want to watch the director's cut of Terminator 3 on my iPod? I might not have to if I lived in France.

Viva la fair use!