Sony and Apple taken to court by French consumer groupSony and Apple are being dragged into a pot of legal hot water as a French consumer rights group is lambasting the both of them for the lack of interoperable DRM.?Their argument is that the Sony and Apple music services are tying consumers to single applications and single brands of music hardware.?
The [Union Federale des Consommateurs--Que Choisir] announced that it would be taking legal action against the pair after conducting interoperability tests last year between a selection of music download services and digital music players, and criticizing the lack of interoperable DRM."The total absence of interoperability between DRM removes not only consumers' power to independently choose their purchase and where they buy it from but also constitutes a significant restraint on the free circulation of creative works," the group said.
Quite simply, I think they are wrong, at least on the Apple/iTunes front. While their DRM is not compatible with other music players, Apple is pretty lax about the burning of iTunes songs to CDs which can be reripped into other formats for other players. While this is not the ideal solution (audio purists, hold back the flames about transcoding between lossy formats), consumers are not locked into just iTunes or the iPod. If there is confusion about this, it should fall onto the customer service departments of the respective companies more so than any governing body. Article Link: Sony and Apple going to French court over DRM
