While I wish that iTunes would work with any mp3 player, I also wish that Blu-ray discs would work in existing DVD players and HD DVD players. I also wish I could use Gilette blades in Shick razors, and I wish I could legally run Mac OS X on my PC.

It’s also be nice to have a GSM phone running on a CDMA network, Nintendo Wii games playing on a PS3 and an Xbox 360, and it’d be nice if I could use much cheaper liquefied natural gas in my petrol/gasoline or diesel engine without needing any modifications.

While we’re at it, why doesn’t government mandate that all coins be exactly the same size, so you could use them in any vending machine anywhere in the world? Heck, why not make the Zune store sell songs that can be played on any mp3 player, too?

I’m equally annoyed that games I buy for the PSP can only be played on a PSP. It’d be nice to pop them into my Nintendo DS, and vice versa. And surely the decision to release songs on the CD format discriminated against anyone owning an audio cassette player. I mean, where was the Government action then? How dare music companies release music in a format that, at the time, couldn’t be played on the vast majority of the world’s music players?

Look, when it comes to a company being able to create a system, they should be able to do this. Why should Apple allow iTunes songs to be played on other players? They were designed to be played on an iPod, or another device that has iTunes, such as PCs, Macs and a couple of phones from Motorola, with the iPhone itself on the horizon.

Governments should be very careful about mandating that a company make its proprietary system open for all to use, otherwise why will businesses take the chance to develop new products and services if the Government can just come along and change the rules on you?

Remembering Apple’s reaction when the French tried to do the same, Apple threatened to pull out of the French market entirely. Thankfully, sense prevailed in the French legislature at the time, although the Europeans are still trying to put together some kind of unified stance against Apple.

Plenty of people have been wanting Apple to open up iTunes and license the Fairplay DRM scheme, but they are not the ones running Apple, nor are they the ones spending hundreds of millions of dollars to create new products that people are falling over themselves to buy. If they were, and posed a real challenge to the iPod, they wouldn’t care what format iTunes sold songs in.

It all comes down to whether or not we have a free market. While we live in a world of regulation in our markets, this decision hurts no-one but Apple themselves, and aims to give a free kick to all of their competitors. Precisely why do any competitors deserve such a free kick? If they were any good at all, they'd have developed products and services that people wanted to use. Instead, they have purchased an iPod, and the system that delivers songs to the iPod is iTunes. If you don't like it - don't use it! Buy CDs instead and rip them, or support online stores that sell songs in unencumbered DRM format.

The decision by Norway to declare iTunes illegal shows that when it comes to true freedom, the market, at least in Norway for digital music sales, is anything but.
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