France Weighs Forcing iPods to Play Other Than iTunes

Thomas Crampton reporting for The New York Times:

“My gut feeling is that Apple will simply pull out of France if these amendments get through,” Mr. Arber said. “Weighed against breaking their business model for all markets, it doesn’t make sense for Apple to continue operating with the iPod and iTunes in France.”

The bullshit aspect of this is that the iPod does play music from other stores — namely, any store that sells CDs. They just don’t license Windows Media DRM from Microsoft, so they can’t and won’t play music from Windows Media-based online stores.

★ Friday, 17 March 2006