Good news for fans of keeping DRM codes a secret so that technology firms can keep their unholy grasp on the digital music sector. That is to say, good news for Apple Computer shareholders. Yep, in a week that started with Apple Computers defeating Apple Corps in a trademark lawsuit, the week ended with the news that, as expected, politicians in the French Senate have amended proposed new copyright laws in Apple's favour.
As previously reported, France's Assembly, in a compromise with opposition MPs who supported the all out legitimisation of P2P file sharing, included a number of measures in the country's new copyright law that restricted the use of digital rights management technology in the legitimate sale of digital music - in particular forcing technology firms to share their DRM systems with competitors and allowing individuals to interfere with DRM technology if it was interfering with their consumer rights.
Those restrictions would have hit market leader Apple the hardest, because their entire digital music business model depends on preventing other companies from selling DRM protected digital music that is compatible with their players - so to lock iTunes customers to iPods, and iPod owners to iTunes. As a result they were the biggest critics of the French Assembly's proposals, accusing politicians of putting in place a copyright environment that would boost piracy.
However to become law the new legislation needed to be passed by France's upper house, the Senate, and pro-active lobbying from the content and technology sectors saw politicians there amend the new laws in the DRM companies' favour, so that the law they passed yesterday includes few of the restrictions proposed by the Assembly. A DRM Commission will be established to assess 'interoperability issues', though critics say this will inevitably work in favour of the technology firms rather than disgruntled customers frustrated with the DRM encoding integrated into the music they buy.
Despite the fact the music industry stands to lose as much as anyone if the technology firms are allowed to use digital rights technology to lock consumers into their products, that pesky condition known to the medical profession as 'piracy paranoia' means that the major record companies welcomed, and in part lobbied for, the Senate's amendments to France's new copyright law.
To that end Olivia Regnier of the International Federation Of The Phonographic Industry yesterday welcomed the law as passed by the Senate, telling reporters: "The Senate, instead of enabling anyone to hack in, puts the matter in the hands of a regulatory authority, which will take decisions and potentially oblige companies to disclose their source code. We feel that the provision voted by the Senate is better balanced, there's an explicit expectation to respect the rules of the game."
A committee of French politicians will now have to check if the proposed legislation is constitutional before it becomes law. That committee will also be charged with the task of settling the inconsistencies in the laws passed by the Assembly and the Senate. Which will be fun for them.