The DRM hits the fan: French iPod law challenges open source

By all accounts we saw the French iPod law pass late last month, but it would appear it was still yet to undergo further revisions and last minute addendums before hitting the executive branch. Those additions to the law were approved by France's Constitutional Court late yesterday, providing for some interesting loopholes. Apparently the crux is still intact, as Apple's FairPlay could be pried open by its competitors, however, under the law a newly appointed French regulatory authority would keep watch over the process in both directions, providing "protection" for companies developing DRM technology (like Apple) by preventing open-source derivatives from existing in the marketplace. In other words, while Apple is legally mandated to open up its DRM to, say, Napster, any open-source FairPlay DRM projects could find their creators in the slammer for up to three years, and fined up to $375,000. Sure, it's still at heart pro consumer -- they don't want open source giving away the DRM shop -- but what happens to the open source DVD players already around, and other open source fair use software projects? Are French anti-DRM open source freedom fighters about to get locked up in a strange turn of events because of this law? In addition to this, fair use statues are also being molded by the law; apparently DRM may now be used to enforce certain aspects of fair use in home media, like creating x or y amount of backup copies of your media. However, there is a bright side: President Chirac has still yet to sign the law into existence, and France's Socialist Party is supposedly trying to push this into evaluation to determine whether it's even constitutional. Sorry kids, we're not through with this biz yet.

[Gordy @ Jul 28th 2006 1:44PM]

Liberals.

[Bryan @ Jul 28th 2006 2:00PM]

What would a libertarian do? The less laws the better. No DMCA. No whatever. Protect your DRM technology yourself. Open source can crack or copy or whatever. Not all libertarians believe in copyright either. All I see when I read about this sh*t is a mess. Compromises and confusion. The government doesn't understand that in order to help consumers it has to give consumers a fair chance to destroy Apple's DRM without penalty.

[Pedro @ Jul 28th 2006 2:25PM]

I say they dont want it... pull the plug... itunes and all. screw the french... you dont want iTunes DRM... dont buy an iPod!

[bazald @ Jul 28th 2006 2:48PM]

I'm not French, but I'm not interested in buying DRM'd music either. My CDs are all encoded in FLAC. I'm perfectly happy with my Cowon iAudio X5 too. I was able to watch an episode of Monty Python in a recent power outage. The whole series fits in under 2 GB with a screen that size ;)

[Kvocal @ Jul 28th 2006 2:52PM]

Boycott the French

[Des @ Jul 28th 2006 3:20PM]

Well a french law only works in France. Even if the law tires to stop french open source players... there will always tons of international open source alternatives (heh...and some french ones, despite the law)

[g3n3tiX [FR] @ Jul 28th 2006 3:22PM]

I am french, and very preoccupied about that law. Think about it : VLC player could dissapear, due to this law. (yes it's french)
I hope chirac doesn't sign it and that it is considered unconstitutional so it does NOT pass. (crosses fingers)

To Kvocal : Why boycott the French ? I am not boycotting you or your country, whichever it is.

[Hitchcock @ Jul 28th 2006 3:28PM]

Why would this law make VLC dissapear. The law (As I understand it) states that Apple (or anyone using DRM) needs to license the technology to other companies who ask (Right now, they refuse to), it doesn't force them to make the DRM open source. As long as VLC doesn't use Apple's DRM without paying for it, VLC has done no wrong.

[chenry @ Jul 28th 2006 3:37PM]

Awaiting the inevitable "France Surrenders" headline.

[CLK @ Jul 28th 2006 6:49PM]

Apple should pull iPod out of France.

Why do young people today think downloading mp3's is a right?

It's not. If you don't like a product simply don't buy it.

Don't make laws to chanced a product. Invent your own product and sell it yourself.

If people are so outraged over DRM why do they keep buying iPods in France?!

Let the free market place decide.

I find it funny France is so concerned about iPods when there is a war in the middle east where hundreds of people are getting killed.

[Z @ Jul 28th 2006 7:06PM]

Stop spouting this free market crap. Apple has a monoploy and they are leveraging it to keep people locked in to both their music store and players.

[frenchfries @ Jul 28th 2006 8:10PM]

i'm french

and in fact here you seem to don't understand anything about this law


it's a global law against us, customers, not against apple and for all majors


we will not be abble to copy any one of ours cd/dvd we buy

p2p is now a crime here

so vlc could be to because it possible to read all kind of stuff on it without be the real owner of the dvd/cd/...


and drm it's just a little part of this law ... nothing for apple in fact


please try to search the true ... and help us against your majors (sony, universal, BMG, Warner et EMI ... = RIAA)

[x23 @ Jul 28th 2006 9:34PM]

"As long as VLC doesn't use Apple's DRM without paying for it, VLC has done no wrong."

i don't think the law is FairPlay or Apple specific. VLC includes open-source anti-DRM features in the form of :

"...and uses the libdvdcss DVD decryption library to handle playback of encrypted DVDs."

and it can convert those now-decrypted DVDs to other formats.

from the articles text : "providing "protection" for companies developing DRM technology (like Apple) by preventing open-source derivatives from existing in the marketplace."

VLC is (or started as and still based there) a french program that includes DRM-defeating technologies. and thus would be made "illegal" under this law.

- - -

"you dont want iTunes DRM... dont buy an iPod!"

iPods have the ability to play iTunes Music Store tracks that contain the FairPlay DRM. iPods however are not limited to playing just those tracks. i see wording to this affect allllllll the time it seems. iPod can function without ever purchasing a single track from the iTunes Music Store... i've managed it... and surely millions of others have as well. The More You Know™ (rainbow star thing with the little jingle happens)

[Nigel @ Jul 28th 2006 9:57PM]

"....and France's Socialist Party is supposedly trying...."


Really, do we need to take the French seriously at this point in history?

[Filip @ Jul 29th 2006 2:14AM]

Strange turn of events? Maybe they should study a little economic history.

These idiots get what they deserve.

Leave it to the market, or crawl back to whatever socialist utopia you crawled out from.

[raki @ Jul 29th 2006 12:17PM]

Well it has pretty much nothing to do with being French, what you have here is the consequences of an EU directive asking european states to implement something similar in spirit to the DMCA. Then the French parliament messed up everything (I pretty much believe they also believe the Internet is a series of tubes) and then the socialist party did ask for a constitutional review of the law, and the constitutional court gave its opinion 2 days ago, and basically messed up everything a little bit more instead of adopting the most promising measures in the statute (like very low fine for copyright infrigment). Why it has nothing to do with France then ? (And even if I'm french i'm willing to agree we do stuff wrong a lot of time) because it has to do with the various lobby at hand when you talk about copyright protections nowadays: fact the music and movie industry is a very strong lobby in France which gets what it wants. Fact: the IT/Tech industry lobby in France is not very strong, Fact: historically we have very strong copyrights laws with poor consumer protection (no such thing as a decent fair use provision), Fact: during the debates around this law consumers made themselves heard and the governement tried to make them a little bit less angry, anyway historically the french system is very protective of "autors" and the supreme court ruled to preserve an old system without regard of the world evolving around us. As for the IPOD controversy, the explantion is interopability or compability: which is something they introduce without knowing what it meant and the Itunes proprietary system was the only example they could come up with (and it was not even sure that Apple was forced or will be forced to open itunes standard as the law was passed). So you can bash the French, but please documente yourself (ttp://eucd.info/index.php?English-readers) and reflect on the DMCA is it that better ? I think the issue is that most legislator and courts do not get the reality around them, rather than who has the dumbest law

[BowlHaircut @ Jul 29th 2006 12:43PM]

Can someone explain to me why the Nazis can roll into town and the French are saluting within minutes yet the people are prepared to take to the streets in protest over DRM?

We may never have had to get involved in World War II had the Nazis just tried to restrict music sales! That would have surely sent the French off the HOOK!

[Thill @ Jul 29th 2006 2:28PM]

How is Apple and iTunes a monopoly??

Definition of monoploy from Websters: "Exclusive control by one group of the means of producing or selling a commodity or service."

So are you telling me that Apple sells the only personal audio player in France? Are there not MP3 players? Are there not CD players?

Are you also telling me that the only way to purchase music is from iTunes? Has France found a way to block all the other downloadable music sites on the Internet? Has France yanked CD's off the shelves of all the music stores?

Maybe, just maybe, people buy the iPod and iTunes because they like it.. Because they feel it is the best player for them and it suits their needs. The bottomline is if you do not like the iPod and iTunes don't buy it. If you happened to purchase music on iTunes, simply burn it to a CD and either listen to the CD, or import it into your own MP3 player..

Give it a rest France.. Seems like you have bigger problems than DRM....

[Andy Miller @ Jul 30th 2006 4:44AM]

BowlHaircut

You are ignorant as well as stupid. Hundreds of thousands of french people were deported to concentration camps or tortured and executed for resisting the Nazi occupation. The French Resistance liberated large parts of southern France and played a major role in the success of the Normandy landings by preventing German reinforcements reaching Normandy.

I am English by the way.

[Andy Miller @ Jul 30th 2006 4:46AM]

Raki's link should have been:

[url]http://eucd.info/index.php?English-readers[/url]

[Andy Miller @ Jul 30th 2006 4:48AM]

D'oh!

http://eucd.info/index.php?English-readers

[Andy Miller @ Jul 30th 2006 4:58AM]

Here are some of the reasons why people in France are opposing the new law (taken from http://eucd.info/index.php?2006/06/30/335-what-does-the-new-french-copyright-bill-do ):

• an abusive extension of copyright (articles 7, 7 bis A, 8, 14 bis): turning the right to make copies for private use and the right to read into exclusive rights, the author being able to authorize or prohibit these acts using systems for access and copy control


• a generalized presumption of guilt for the public (articles 13 and 14): prohibition on disabling or publishing a means for disabling a technical measure of copy control, including for instance if this technical measure infringes on privacy or prevents a legal use of the work; merely decoding using unapproved software is punished by a fine of up to 3750 EUR, and proposing such software to others is punished by up to 6 months in jail and/or up to a 30,000 EUR fine;

• censorship for authors of free software (article 7 bis A): - creation of an administrative authority empowered with the ability to prohibit the publication of free software accessing protected works users of free software who would still use such software for accessing protected works would risk fines and/or jail sentences

• infringement on the neutrality of technique (article 12 bis): pretends that communication software can be "evidently designed" for the exchange of copyrighted data, and punishes by up to 3 years in prison and/or up to a 300,000 EUR fine any person who would design or publish such software, or even incite to the use thereof.

[James @ Jul 31st 2006 2:35PM]

I am an American...

But I'm glad I'm not stupid like the rest of my kinsmen here who trust new government laws (and what the government does) as well as big business. Unfortunately, so many people don't understand the original ideas that came out of the Enlightenment era. Does "natural laws" ring a bell? How about "private property?" Let me remind you all about the good old days when people actually owned their own property, legally. They could do whatever they wanted with their property, hell they could even give it away. This is not so true today with DRM. You don’t own the items you purchase because you can’t do with them whatever you want to do with them. You can only use them on some proprietary piece of hardware or software (which inevitably you probably also have to purchase). This is not the private property great thinkers like John Locke originally theorized about.
As long as the conglomerates and oligopolies (and in some cases, monopolies) are allowed to keep forcing us to give up our natural rights, and simultaneously keeping other smaller businesses out of the market, then things will never be the true free market place so dreamt about by great thinkers who’ve set the standards for the capitalistic economies used by many nations today.

[Judous @ Sep 15th 2006 8:57PM]

Im not an Apple person. I don't own an Ipod.

From what im getting out of this is that Apple has a nice device (Ipod) and it works exclusively with their program. You buy their device to use their service. I really don't see anything wrong with that. If you don't like... Jesus don't buy it, get something else. You wan't an Ipod, but you dont want to use Itunes. Tough crap, if they program it so that you have to then that's how it is. These people aren't on a grand crusade to make pirating harder, it's so non tech people can pirate.

Bottomline is. You know you have to use Itunes to use with an Ipod, if you don't like it then don't invest in it. There are other quality devices out there besides the Ipod, and if there are enough people out there who think the same thing then the bad sales will send a better message to Apple rather than your sharpie signs.