So, those wacky French political types yesterday backed those previously reported plans to force technology firms to share their proprietary DRM-protected digital file formats, meaning that digital content bought from download platforms will have to work on any digital music player, and not just those manufactured or approved by the platform's owners.
The move, part of the country's wider reworking of legislation responding to the growth of the digital content industries, is in response to calls by consumer rights groups for better interoperability between competing technologies. While the new law has implications for all digital technology companies, including Sony and Microsoft, it is perhaps most significant for Apple whose entire business plan to date in the digital music space has been based on restricting use of its proprietary digital file format to its own download platform and players.
The new legislation was passed by the French parliament yesterday and will now have to go through France's upper house, the Senate, to actually become law, though that should happen in the next few weeks. Assuming the new laws aren't blocked there, the industry will then look with interest as to how Apple responds.
They may choose to withdraw from the French digital music market completely rather than adapt their business model, although long term that might not be a real solution if French politicians then start to lobby for interoperability rules to be adopted by the European Union.
Alternatively the computer firm may try to take advantage of the somewhat vague wording of the new legislation in a bid to prove their existing business model does not, in fact, violate the new rules. They could say that all DRM is ultimately hackable and any that DRM-ed file can be played on any music player once hacked. Of course that would potentially mean Apple would lose legal protection against hackers - which isn't desirable - but it is possible some clever lawyer somewhere (and some are clever you know) might find a way to get round the new legislation without drastically affecting the computer firm's IP rights.
However, Apple are yet to comment on this whole thing, so for the time being it all remains to be seen.