To Norway now, where Apple has been battling with superhero consumer ombudsman Bjørn Erik Thon since the dawn of time. Apple was supposed to give a response to the Norwegians’ latest inquiries by Monday the 3rd, a date laid down by The Hammer of Thon himself.
While Apple apparently did offer some sort of comment, it doesn’t appear to have satisfied our favorite Mr. Ombudsman:
“We have received an answer from iTunes, but it was an answer that didn’t add anything of substance. We will now continue what we have done so far, prepare to bring the case before the Market Council.”
Anybody know what Norwegian for “snap” is?
Norway’s central beef, as you’ll recall, is that music purchased from iTunes isn’t playable elsewhere. Of course, if you believe Steve Jobs, he’s been trying to get the labels to let him drop DRM for over a year now. And so these little piggies are headed to Market Council. See you in another six months.
F@#k Norway!!! The cold must be freezing their brains!
Let us hope cooler heads prevail than the above. A decision might help us end DRM.
In this case i assume in Norge i can:
- buy "Super Mario Ultimate Edition" and get a version for all the past and future Nintendo platforms and any other imaginable gaming platform (Sony, x-box, Win, Mac, Linux, Atari 2600 etc...)
- buy a copy of MS Office 2008 and get a Win & Mac Version and additionally the Norway only special edition versions for several incarnations of Unixes/BSDs, VMS, CPM, etc...)
- etcetera
“It's a consumer's right to transfer and play digital content bought and downloaded from the Internet to the music device he himself chooses to use. iTunes makes this impossible or at least difficult, and hence, they act in breach of Norwegian law.”
Sounds reasonable to me.
F@#k Norway??? You must be really enjoying your DRM.
The requirement is not that Apple removes DRM, but that the music is not restricted to be played on Apple HW. If the DRM scheme was, say, an ISO standard, allowing me to play my purchased music on whatever digital audio device I own, there would be no problem with the consumer law.
And it is not so cold here, my brain still works! No risk of frying it, though..
"Sounds reasonable to me."
Only if you're as ignorant as the ombudsman appears to be that this issue is not of Apple's making. It's the music labels... who (except for EMI) won't allow Apple to sell music without DRM.
Just how many Norwegians are screaming bloody murder and pounding down the door to the ombudsman's office over this... or is this whole situation just a preemptive measure on "behalf" of the Norwegian citizenry?
I have to think that if the ombudsman is getting so bent out of shape about this relatively minor issue, what do you think he will do regarding the Mac OS/hardware "lock-in"?