This is a little more complex than your paragraph would suggest.

Apple has built a service model that includes buying a specific piece of hardware (the iPod). They have also, successfully, negotiated with record companies the world over to get them to license their property so that Apple can act as a store front. Through all of this, music has become legally available online and a new market has been created.

So Apple has done the hard work of negotiating, found a way (imperfect though it is) to get record companies to release their catalog and designed an iconic device that people like and are willing to pay for.

Why shouldn't they get pissed off when a government devalues their effort and investment?

I don't blame them for getting upset. But don't you think that sort of language is just a touch hysterical? Could they not have found a better way of expressing their point of view? "State-sponsored piracy". That's quite an opening gambit.

Let's face it - in the end it is only music - a discretionary type of entertainment. This is the place for parliaments to move on to, not start on. If they are going to start forcing companies to start opening up sources, a far better place to start would either be on major work software (such as ms office) or hardware equipment.

It is ridiculous that I am unable to work effectively with my colleagues - despite almost all of my tools and software being open source (right down to the OS) - because they happen to use closed proprietary formats.

Even more ridiculous is that for hardware I need to use (such as a graphics card) I am forced to rely on third party hacks. Unfortunately, for my computer at my new job, I was given a choice between 3 major suppliers (oh to be back in Melbourne and to be able to do it myself). Only one of which offered an AMD chip, all of which forced me to go with an ATI card for graphics.

By all means move on to entertainment when they have a spare moment. But if you are going to force companies to open source, start with more important parts of the computer life.

As for me, I was majorly inconvenienced when my wife got her ipod and I had to change my entire ogg collection to mp3 so that she could listen to our music.

Twice in the last week I have seen in the Australian I think and the AFR today - I have seen stories about the IPod/France thing saying: "Only music purchased from apple will play on iPods"

I find it very annoying that journalists [CW: But NOT Bleeding Edge!] continue to repeat the myth - that only iTunes music will play on an iPod. I will keep this simple - iPods play music in two formats - AAC and MP3. The apple music client iTunes can be configured to rip your CD's in two formats AAC and MP3. So in my household all our iPods were filled very rapidly with MP3 format files ripped from our own CD collection, without ever purchasing from the iTunes store, which didn't exist in Australia at the time we bought our first iPods. These files will also play on any other MP3 player not just iPods. Ignoring the legality of doing this in Australia (and I don't believe this has ever been tested) it is false to say that you are forced to buy music from Apple for your iPod.

You might argue that if we did buy music from the iTunes store it will be in the AAC format and be restricted by the Fairplay didgital rights management (DRM) system to only play on a limited number of PCs or iPods. This would be correct if you ignored the ever-expanding set of utilities for converting these AAC formated songs into other formats, like MP3. These include PlayFair and Hymn to name two. These products have questionable legality but they do exist and are freely available on the internet for people in Australia (or France) to use. In fact using these utilities is the only way this music can be played on PCs with the Linux operating system, for which the Itunes client doesn't exist. Since there is no equivalent law as the US Digital Management Circumvention Act (DMCA) in Australia, provided you only used these tools to copy music to devices you own, I cannot see why you would be prosecuted for breaching copyright.

Links to more information about this are here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/01/05/itunes_drm_cracked_wide_open/
http://www.hymn-project.org/

The Songbirdnest blog has a great post...

In 2002, Steve Jobs said, "If you legally acquire music, you need to have the right to manage it on all other devices that you own."

In 2006, France said, "The consumer must be able to listen to the music they have bought on no matter what platform."

Sounds like Steve agrees with France.

It looks like the French made some changes...

via. The Age

"The final text reaches a true balance between the respect of copyright" and "private copies and interoperability for internet users, and the legitimate wish to see companies linked to culture and the internet develop", said Christian Vanneste, who helped work out an agreement between the two houses of parliament. The vote is scheduled for Friday.