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March 17, 2006

Go France! Law to Make IPod Play Other Music

Apple can't be happy as France weighs forcing iPods to play music from other services, instead of just ITunes.

The principle is right-- companies should not be able to leverage control of technology to control what content you can buy. Such tech strategies threaten to balkanize markets and create lots of incompatibility, locking customers into technologies and undermining competition.

And I'm just personally pissed that my IPod can't play free online books from the New York City Public Library. It's just criminal for a company not to play such free content. There's a bit of a war already on the concept of libraries and free content-- and it would be good if Apple was slapped down a bit by France and, hopefully, the US eventually.

Posted by Nathan at March 17, 2006 07:56 AM