French legislators gave final approval on Friday to a copyright law that could force Apple Computer Inc to make songs purchased from its market-leading iTunes Music Store compatible with music players of its rivals.
The Senate and the National Assembly both voted to approve the law, which will also reduce the penalties for the illegal downloading of music to little more than a parking fine.
The law could go into effect within a month.
Legal experts and industry lobbyists said that the resulting law was a messy compromise that would make it difficult to achieve the goal of the legislation -- to force Apple, or other companies with proprietary music formats, to make their offerings compatible with rivals' digital music devices.
"The bill passed today has softened the core of the first proposals," said Hugo Lueders, director for public policy in Europe at CompTIA, an information technology trade association. The group commended the French parliament for "passing a more market-oriented copyright protection bill."
While the law states that copy protection software cannot hinder access to a legally purchased digital work, there are a number of conditions that must be met before a company like Apple can change its format.
One way that Apple can protect itself from forced interoperability, for example, is by having musicians agree that music sold on iTunes can not be converted to other formats.
Additionally, rivals seeking to make their devices compatible with songs from iTunes must convince a newly created regulatory authority that interoperability will not infringe on patents or other rights belonging to Apple.
"Since American companies tend to patent everything, I am sure Apple can find a way to stop giving away information about their proprietary format," said Dominique Menard, a partner at the Lovells law firm who specializes in intellectual property. "The law is also so complex that we really need to see the application."
The vote brought to an end more than six months of heated debate that has led to a broader European discussion about governments mandating access to digital cultural content.
"This text affirms a new principle, interoperability, which makes France a pioneer country in Europe," Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, the French minister of culture, told the National Assembly on Friday.
Consumer advocates in Norway, Denmark and Sweden have asked Apple to explain by Aug. 1 why songs purchased on iTunes could not be played on rival devices.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, meanwhile, released a report on Friday warning that difficulties in transferring digital files among devices hindered the development of content.
Lawmakers in Poland and Switzerland are likely to discuss the issue while updating national copyright laws this year.
Donnedieu de Vabres, who in December was given the task of aligning national copyright legislation to norms set by the EU, instead pushed for legislation that could have far-reaching consequences for the software and entertainment industries in the Internet era.
The process was fraught with unexpected twists, including a brief moment when it seemed that peer-to-peer file sharing of the sort considered illegal in most countries.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last