Did you hear the news? “Norway” has a problem with the DRM used in iTunes, officially.
The country’s consumer ombudsman, which sounds a government-subsidized version of Ask Asa, said the follow in his latest report:
It’s a consumer’s right to transfer and play digital content bought and downloaded from the internet to the music device he himself chooses to use. iTunes makes this impossible or at least difficult, and hence, they act in breach of Norwegian law.
So, unless Apple gets its act together and, I guess, removes the DRM (at least for Norway), it’ll be subject to fines in the six figure (Euros, mind you) range. That’s not exactly something Apple wants to deal with, I’m guessing.
It gets worse for Apple. Should Norway win its case and actually start fining Apple, there’s a good chance that the European Union will get involved. It’s one thing to upset the Norwegian consumer ombudsman, but it’s a whole different matter when you’re dealing with Brussels. Just ask Microsoft how pleasant it is dealing with those guys.
This is such BS how is it that apple gets blamed for something the music industry is doing. Apple wants to get rid of the DRM but the music labels won’t let them. Why don’t these yahoo’s go after the music labels.
Since when did the music labels demand that iTunes lock the music to iPods?
This case isn’t really about removing all DRM from iTunes, it’s about removing the lock-in to iPod. How they’d implement a DRM that’s open enough for (almost) all vendors to use is beyond me, but I still think Apple should follow the laws of the countries they operate in.
Why would the EU get involved? Norway is not part of the EU, so this argument is a bit weak. But generally agree that if this goes through, Apple will have to rethink its stategy.