HiFi Blog: digital audio goodness

As expected, the author’s rights law was approved 296-193 by the National Assembly, France’s lower house. It now remains to be debated and voted by the Senate in May. BusinessWeek ran an interesting article regarding the France vs. Apple saga two days ago.

Apple wasn’t excited with the news, as evidenced by their statements:

Apple Computer Inc. said on Tuesday a proposed French law that would force Apple to make sure that songs bought on its iTunes music store can work on any portable player would result in “state-sponsored piracy.”
[...]
“The French implementation of the EU Copyright Directive will result in state-sponsored piracy,” said Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris. “If this happens, legal music sales will plummet just when legitimate alternatives to piracy are winning over customers.”
[...]
“iPod sales will likely increase as users freely upload their iPods with ‘interoperable’ music which cannot be adequately protected,” Kerris said. “Free movies for iPods should not be far behind.”

Question: am I the only one who thinks Apple sounds entirely anti-consumer with those words? Up until now, we were going to bed with the thought that Apple is the good guys, only shoving DRM down our throats because the bad guys (RIAA) wanted to—it was an illusion of sorts, we knew it, yet we wanted to believe it and Apple was happy to play along with that comfortable theory. Now, when the company’s spokeswoman tells us that we’re going to be pirates if FairPlay opens up, I’m pissed.

First of all, for crying outloud, the files will still be DRM’ed. We’re just talking about inter-operable DRM. And second of all, dear Apple, do you want to tell me that DRMing the music I buy is the only way to keep me from being a music pirate? What happened to the mantra: “people don’t want to steal music—there just wasn’t a means for them to have instant access to the music they want and reward their favorite artists at the same, up until the iTMS came”?

Honestly, I’m surprised Apple dropped the ball so hard on this one. Let me put it this way: if I were to give you those quotes without telling you who’s behind them, who would you guess? The Recording Industry Association of America or Apple?

My point exactly.