By Jo Best, 14 March 2006 16:05
NEWS
A law currently making its way through the French parliament could see Apple's FairPlay DRM opened up.
Changes to the French droit d'auteur (copyright) law, currently being debated in parliament, are expected to be voted in this week.
Among the changes the controversial legislation will bring in will be measures to effectively dismantle all types of DRM (digital rights management), including the technology that prevent content bought from Apple's music stores being played on Microsoft devices and vice versa.
The law will enshrine the right to interoperability between content and devices, effectively allowing consumers to break or otherwise circumvent DRM and play music on the MP3 player of their choice.
In a recent parliamentary debate, Dominique Richard, a deputé for the UMP coalition, described the law as instituting "interoperability that will stop content being the hostage of technology and authorise creativity using free [as in speech] software".
The law will also overhaul the country's legal system with regard to music piracy, giving those convicted of downloading pirated music a fixed 38 fine and those convicted of illegally making music available for download a 150 fine.
The legislation will also protect the right to make "personal copies" of content, such as music CDs.
ZDNet France's Estelle Dumout contributed to this article
Comments
There are 7 comments. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
Will this also apply to DRM CDs?
2. Bill
How bizarre. The press are focusing on how this affects Apple. It wasn't Apple that insisted on DRM, it was the record companies.
And note, this will affect Microsoft WMA protection as well
3. Pascal Fuks
The issue is not so much on iTunes DRM, which are easy to remove, but more on Microsoft's WMA DRM.
At this time, it exists some well known methods to remove the DRM from iTunes bought musics, but not even one working on Microsoft. This lead to situation where people buying a cheap MP3/WMA player without DRM system (even some older from Creative) are not able to play there legally bought musics (only way, burn a CD, then RIP CD, but there is a loss in quality).
4. Andrew Lewis
I hope the French push this through and it sets a precedent for the rest of Europe to follow....
Bill has raised a good point. The record companies are making a fortune out of selling digital downloads several times as consumers have different devices. At the moment consumers are best placed to buy a CD and rip to MP3, WMA etc as suits them.
The same arguement applies for the different region DVDs.
The record and movie industries should stop being so greedy. If the consumer has paid for the copyrighted item they should be able to make copies for their own use to either as a backup or to use that material on another device they own.
If fair play to the consumer costs these industries too much, then maybe their directors and senior management should subsidise this out of their rather large salaries.
5. Kirk
Viva la France
Fantastic news... Why is it, the media industry keeps putting restrictions on their customers? Surely they should be trying to get consumers on board buy providing a better service... Simple business logic seems to be escaping the new media companies who are trying to create their own monopolies by restricting their customers' freedom to choose.
This ruling is a great step in the right direction that says clearly that if you buy something legally then you should be able to do with it what you will - as long as you don't break the law...
6. Alister
Or will the music download companies simply pull out of France?
7. anonymous
Hooray! The French are leading the world for a change!
The record companies can enforce their rules, as they have an unfair monopoly - one can only buy a recording from one company, so if a customer wants a particular song, the record company is free to charge almost what it likes for a recording. And to impose whatever unfair, unjust (possibly even marginally illegal) restrictions it wants...
In response to a comment above, it wasn't the record companies who insisted that iTunes d/l's only play on an iPod, it was Apple. The same Apple who won't let iPod users d/l from Real, Tesco, et al.
I hope the APIG is watching the French closely...