France wants to take on Apple

Question

Alright,
If there is another place to post this I am game, but in the mean time check out this news I just came across...
The French National Assembly passed the online copyright bill, and the legislation is now headed to France's Senate, which will start debating the measure in May. If approved, the bill could force Apple (AAPL :61.81, -2.18, -3.4% ) and other companies to make public the proprietary technology behind their media players and online music sites.
Such measures could make it so that consumers could download songs to their iPods from non-Apple music stores, and use other music players to download songs from Apple's iTunes France music store.
Apple officials didn't immediately return calls for comment.
Apple, which recently marked the sale of its billionth song from iTunes, doesn't break out geographic sales from its iTunes store. The company currently offers songs for sale in 21 countries.
Jim Prendergast, of the public policy group American For Technology Leadership, derided the French decision, calling it a "direct attack" on Apple's intellectual property, and saying that one of the ramifications could be Apple pulling its iTunes store out of the French market.
"Once governments force companies to give away their innovations, their intellectual property rights there will no longer be an incentive to create new products that will benefit consumers," Prendergast said.
Gene Munster, an analyst with Piper Jaffray, said the French decision is likely to have little impact on Apple's music business, and estimated that France is responsible for less than 2% of Apple's iPod and iTunes sales.
Munster said that based on Apple history, he believes the company "would prefer to remove itself from the French market than start what could be a slippery slope of other countries passing similar legislation."
All I can say is that they have enough to worry about as it is and attacking Apple is not going to solve any of their problems.
Allen
17' g4 powerbook   Mac OS X (10.4.2)  
17' g4 powerbook   Mac OS X (10.4.2)  

Answer 1

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