France and DRM...

I thought what France tried to push was really innovative. It realy tried to open the playing field with respect to DRM. Right now, the model is as follow:

• You either have a big audio offering (Launch.com, Napster, etc.) and no ipod

or

• You have an ipod but only one music vendor (itunes) to choose from

I don't think that's very good for the customer. I recently purchased an MP3 player for somebody I knew. What did I get? An Ipod of course. It's a great device. I also wanted to upgrade my own MP3 player, but I couldn't get myself to order an Ipod. Why? Because I wanted to also use the Yahoo Music Unlimited To Go service. So what is the closest thing to an Ipod I can get that will support this service? A Zen Vision:M device that is nearly twice the thickness as an Ipod? That's not very impressive.

I think compatibility and openess would be of great benefit to the me. I'm curious to see if the watered down version of the bill actually makes any difference in the end. I'm also curious to see if Apple would actually close their itunes store if they were forced to open up their standards. Maybe they would be forced to deploy an Ipod firmware that supported DRMed Windows Media content!

Posted under drm