French iPod law watered down

Stan Beer
Sunday, 30 July 2006 17:41

Your IT - Home IT

Finally, Apple can afford to feel a little safer in France because a law which could have forced the company to make the iTunes music store compatible with music players other than iPod has been watered down.

Aspects of the French law has been ruled unconstitutional by the French Constitutional Council, which ruled that the law violated constitutional protections on property.

However, Apple is not out of the woods yet because the DRM neutrality aspect of the law, which is the part that could force Apple to license iTunes, has not been eradicated just modified to make life a little easier for companies like Apple.

Under the new provisions of the law, Apple could still be forced to license iTunes provided it was compensated.

The question now becomes who decides what is adequate compensation for a company whose business model for selling iPods depends on its iTunes DRM system. Apple obviously believes that no amount of compensation would be enough, so the chances are if push came to shove, the company would still shut down iTunes in France.