French Senate Bows Down to the Mighty Apple 2174

Apple and the content producers it does business with have business model: content producers provide songs; apple Provides a way for people to buy them and play them on their iPods. The content producers need a way to prevent users from just copying songs they buy and giving them sway for free. (That would be the same as someone buying a popular book, making a zillion copies on a Xerox machine, and distributing them -- which is illegal.)

Apple has technlogies for almost the whole process. Other media players and providers have only parts of it. The artists and distributors are separate enbreasties in both cases. But in other MP3 (and video) players, Microsoft creates the DRM software, various hardware manufacturers make the players, and various distributors (online stores such as Wal-Mart; Real Rhapsody, etc.) sell the content.

The proposed French legislation would require manufacturers of players and sellers of content to reveal to all the algorithms of their encryption schemes and the encryption keys. This would destroy that entire business ... not just in France but in the whole world. For what's to keep someone from going to France to get these algorithms and keys and then apply them elsewhere?

NRen2k5, explain to me how a government's destroying a reasonable business model is "fair business".

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