The Consumer Protection Commissioner, Meglena Kuneva, has been talking tough on the whole iTunes interoperability thing. German magazine Focus quote Kuneva as saying: "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". Although EU officials stress the comments represented Kuneva's own opinions rather than Commission policy, with resentment growing in a number of European countries over interoperability issues in the digital music sector, and with those kinds of opinions at the top of the European hierarchy, it is surely only a matter of time before proposals are put forward at an EC level to force digital music companies to open up their proprietary DRM systems to their competitors. Whether political types considering those proposals will buy Apple boss Steve Jobs' line of "it's the major record companies fault, they should sell MP3s", and in doing so divert the wrath of regulators to the music rather than IT sector, remains to be seen.
Mar 13, 2007
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1 min read
EC official speaks out about iTunes interoperability
EU Consumer Protection Commissioner Meglena Kuneva has criticised the lack of interoperability between iTunes songs and other players, though officials stress her views are personal.