By Estelle Dumout, 10 November 2004 17:13
NEWS The French Competition Council has dismissed the case brought by Virgin's French arm, Virginmega.fr, against Apple for alleged abuse of market dominance. The French download site wanted to force Cupertino to lift the lid on its DRM, to enable Virgin to make its downloads compatible with the iPod.
Apple has always refused to open up its proprietary Fairplay - the system DRM that allows songs from the iTunes store to only be played on iPods - to competitors. Virginmega.fr, on the other hand, has opted for Microsoft's DRM - which means its downloads can't be played on iPods at all.
Due to a lack of "sufficiently convincing elements", the Council rejected Virgin's case and call for action. Its members noted that "access to the Fairplay DRM isn't indispensable to the development of legal platforms for the downloading of online music." According to them, the market is "in rapid expansion... and very dynamic, in France as well as in other European countries and the US".
The Council did however note that lack of interoperability between different download sites and music players is "a disadvantage for consumers" but added "situations like this recur in sectors linked to information technology," and weren't necessarily affected by competition law.
Furthermore, it also highlighted that "the link in causality between the Apple's possibly dominant position in the hard disc music player market and the competition situation with regard to the download market isn't established."
According to its analysis "various models of music player, with or without hard disc, that integrate with Microsoft's DRM system and are compatible with Virginmega.fr's platform are appearing on the French market", adding that players with a hard disc, like the iPod "are and will remain dominant for a long time" over players with Flash memory.
When contacted by silicon.com sister site ZDNet France, Virgin and Apple declined to comment.
Estelle Dumout writes for ZDNet France
Comments
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1. JadisOne
I don't believe it, a court with some sense. I still don't understand how Virgin came to the conclusion that Apple was being anticompetitive. There are a gazillion HD based MP3 players out there. Virgin, as well as a bunch of other yahoos out there, are just upset that they can not acheive the same success with their own devices.
Don't get mad at Apple b/c the consumers chose them and not Virgin (and Real and Sony and Microsoft and...).
2. Richard
Sorry, JadisOne, that's bonkers. IMHO you are missing the point altogether.
" Virgin... are just upset that they can not acheive the same success with their own devices. "
If Virgin were worried about selling devices Apple's DRM would not be the issue. Instead, like Real, they want their *downloads* to be playable on the iPod but Apple are blocking that option, wanting to keep everything In House. Which is odd, because Jobs freely admits that Apple make almost nothing on the ITMS but use the Fairplay protected downloads bought there to *drive* the sale of iPods.
It is much like printer manufacturers banning compatible ink cartridges. Except that in this case both sides have nothing to lose and much to gain from compatibility. Apple would establish AAC and the Fairplay DRM as standards. More iPods would be sold. Inferior WMA would stutter and fall.
Anybody not looking through Apple-tinted specs can see that it is all about Apple wanting to control the total iPod experience - downloads included. This paranoia and arrogance will be their undoing.
Again.
3. anonymous
Apple made the mistake with the OS war by not making it open standard and allowing 3rd party manufacturers to develop PCs that ran the apple OS. MSFT did the opposite and now have 93% of the mkt - I would have thought some lessons might have been learnt from this.
4. Jay
I totally agree that Apple's paranoia and arrogance will certainly be their undoing. The may be milking it now but that won't last, now that other companies have their eyes firmly fixed on the download market. Once the legal download market gets to the stage whereby, there will inevitably be sigificantly more sites using .wma, and more players for this format, the iPod will become another iMac story.
5. anonymous
JadisOne - typical american arrogance. You think you understand the issue but you do not.
Virgin do not make HD players, so do not compete with Apple's iPod, they want to be able to offer music downloads to iPod users.
Do you see now?