Monday, January 29. 2007
Link.
Following the Norwegian consumer ombudsman's ruling last week that Apple iTune's lack of interoperability with devices other than its own iPod is illegal, Germany's federal consumer protection association, the VZBV, and the Dutch consumer protection agency, along with Finland and France, have joined a continent-wide move to get Apple to change its coding restrictions.
In France, Que Choisir, the consumer association, advocates an even more radical approach to that of Norway, arguing that any use of digital rights management was against consumers' interests.
The French group is in the middle of a court case against Apple, after scoring a legal victory this month against Sony France, which operates a similar closed system tying music downloads to its own players.
Digital rights management and the lack of inter-operability has been blamed for slowing growth in legal digital downloads. Independent record labels sell their music in unprotected MP3 format, while EMI has started to experiment, recently releasing a Norah Jones single without DRM.
