Reuters: European Union consumer chief Meglena Kuneva has hit out at Apple Inc.’s bundling of its popular iPod music players and its iTunes online music store, according to German weekly magazine Focus.
“Do you think it’s fine that a CD plays in all CD players but that an iTunes song only plays in an iPod? I don’t. Something has to change,” EU Consumer Protection Commissioner Kuneva was quoted as saying in a preview of an interview to be published on Monday.
Apple could not be immediately reached for comment on the report.
Norway, a European country that is not in the EU, is battling Apple for the same reason. In January, it said the computer and software giant must liberalize its music download system by October 1 or face legal action.
Pressure on Apple has been building, with consumer rights organizations from Germany, France, Finland and Norway recently agreeing a joint position in their battles against iTunes. (…)
Mr.X | Monday, March 12, 2007 at 11:42
Boo Hoo.. That’s what DRM Is (Digital Rights Management). If you did not want it then you should not have purchased an i-Pod in the first place. So I am not even the least bit sympathetic to this. I personally bought a Treo with an 8GB SDcard & I can watch movies, play mp3′s, take and store Photos, surf the web, stream video, use push E mail to receive E mail, stay connected with my Yahoo, MSN, AOL & ICQ messenger Buddies, control my PC from just about any ware, play thousands of games, do unit conversions, currency conversions, language conversions, text to speech, use it as a GPS device, stream music to other Bluetooth devices (cool when you walk in the door and want to continue listing to a song you were listening to in your car on your pc), schedule tasks, plan appointments, set up multiple alarms & make Phone calls. Just to name a few things that can be done without being controlled by any form of DRM. Freedom is nice eh? Next time don’t be a Lemming, buy something else. Its not like Apple’s iPod is the only Mp3 player in the world..
Mr.X | Monday, March 12, 2007 at 12:02
Say hello to the world’s best music player.
http://www.musicmatch.com/home.htm
The quality of Music match has been b*tch slapping Apples service for years & was out before them, but since the media has such a hard on for all things Apple you just don\’t hear much about it.
DRM will always suck unless all players use the same DRM software but i digress since no DRM is even better