iPod/iTunes law in France

I am not sure if you heard about it but this is retarted. France has almost passed a law making iTunes and the iPod compatible with other players. Steve Jobs, head of Apple, said that that is basically legalizing piracy. Apple has a format that encodes it so it can't be pirated and can only work with the iPod. France is socialist and they don't think it is fair that Apple has 80% of the mp3 player market. That is how free economy works. If someone wants to beat them, make a better product. The US is backing Apple in this and if it doesn't work, Apple will probably pull out of France. What is your opinion?

http://www.macnn.com/articles/06/03/21/ ... ns.itunes/

[coolbeans326]

Ummm.... w/e.

"Under the bill, companies would be required to reveal the secrets of hitherto-exclusive copy-protection technologies such as Apple's FairPlay format and the ATRAC3 code used by Sony's Connect store and Walkman players."

Did anyone tell the french they don't have to use Apple or Sony products for MP3 players and online music stores? Nobody uses iTunes unless they have an iPod. Much like nobody uses creative media source unless they have a creative MP3 player. This is rediculous, the internet is world wide. Apple cannot release the source code to their encoder just in France, becuase people in France will leak it to everyone else and Apple would be screwed.

Pfft! This is why I just go out and buy the albums. iTunes suck, i'd rather just buy the whole album and have it on CD so I could listen to it in my car and what not

[gouldy]

Why not just download stuff and put it on a CD edge, like everyone else

I haven't bought an album in 5 years and yet I have just over a 100 CD's in my collection, which probably isn't that much, but considering I haven't bought any albums for 5 years . Plus you can take songs you don't like off albums and add good songs from other albums and other bands, make yourself a nice compilation [^]

Personally i think ipods are pretty cool. But i tunes is just crap. Why not just use windows media player is is so much easier

Actually, iTunes is a much better program then Windows Media Player in my opinion. It is easier to use, has great integration with the Music Sotre (which I use a lot because people keep getting me gift cards to it), and flawlessly connects to my iPod.

^ Nice name.

[jayman]

good, it should be like that..an mp3 is simply a somewhat decent representation of sound, a clever aural illusion,.. this just encourages the manufactures and evelopers to develop better ways of distributing music, but the purest representation of sound will always be magnetic tape... the reason for this is that the charge on the tape is an EXACT representation of the recorded waveform, in fact even a clean , static free vinyl lp, is a better representation of pure sound than anything digital.. of course i cannot expect this to matter to the general public, and an mp3 player is a good way for one to HEAR songs they like, like in a car or at a party, but not for LISTENING to music

Originally posted by Joe Da Coaster Dude

Personally i think ipods are pretty cool. But i tunes is just crap. Why not just use windows media player is is so much easier

Thats exactly how I used to think...Untill I bought my Ipod and was forced to switch to Itunes. Itunes is far superior in so many ways. You should give it a try man.

Why not just download stuff and put it on a CD edge, like everyone else

I will download one or two songs by an artist and decide whether or not to go out and buy the album. I may have already got all the songs on the album but I still would like to do my part to support the band for thier music. People these days really do not know what music is and they really have no respect whatsoever for it

I think all the copy protection stuff on legal mp3s is annoying. What if I want to put a song on my phone memory or a cheapo mp3 player for the gym as well as my ipod? Maybe there is a user rights issue there? I know if I were to download illegaly I'd have the option of useing the file however I want with no restrictions.

But the whole matter at hand isn't how limiting the copy protection is, its the fact that if Apple were to give up the code on how they do it, it renders the copy protection useless.

The problem with i tunes is that you cannot use songs from your i tunes library and drag them to a blank CD. Its stupid

What do you mean drag them to a blank CD? There is a way to burn CD's in iTunes. Just create a playlist, insert a blank CD, and in the upper-right hand corner (when you are looking at the playlist) is a button that says burn CD. Press that and burn away.