Freedom fries

A small ripple in the pond was made by French lower parliament decision to ban DRM, forcing every music playing gadget to be allowed to play every digital music format, and vice-versa. Apple Computers, probably the biggest company to "suffer" from this legislation was quick to respond.

What argument did they respond with? FUD.

Just to push a point here, Apple's have no problem with other formats being played on their iPods (which supports mp3 and other non-DRM formats), it's that their proprietary 'Freeplay' (snigger) files would be available to play on other machines. How does that become "state-sponsored piracy", you ask? Simple, once the file-format is open, you would be able to take the music file you bought from Apple and play it on every other machine, thus encouraging you to buy more music files from Apple... No, wait...

Let's try again. Today, if you want to play your iTunes file at anything else but an iPod, you need to 'crack' it with some third-party (illegal) software, which is a bit of a hassle and tussle, making it much easier to just illegally download the file in the first place instead of buying it from... Rats.

I can go on forever. But it's not the point. Here is what Apple is really saying:

Allowing iTunes files to be played on other machines would mean people don't have to buy iPods to play music they downloaded from Apple.

That's it. All the "state-sponsored piracy" bullcrap is just that.