Myboynoah, are you involved in business affairs in France?
 

I was wondering how much the US government works with the French in regards to the current iTunes issues? Do we work at all with the Frenchies to discourage such things as the lawsuit to open the iTunes code? Is that in your office at all or a completely different agency?

Is it just political posturing from them to act like a big player in this issue or do they really want to "serve the greater good of the world"? Also, if this goes through, I imagine Apple would just drop itunes.co.fr or whatever, but could people in France merely go to any other itunes site after that point to access the store?

There are competing U.S. business interests (Apple and the music industry to name two) so I highly doubt the USG will get involved. Even then, one would wonder if this is the issue to get involved in.

As for the French, I think they are driven by the honest opinion that Apple's strategy is anticompetitive. One could argue that the exclusivity between I-Pod and I-Tunes limits competition (I-Pod owners are forced to buys songs at Apple-controlled artificially elevated or lower prices).

Apple needs to be concerned that France's move does not prove to be the first step to full adoption by the rest of the EU. This could happen since the genie is now out of the bottle.

Yes, Apple could drop itunes.co.fr, but then they would be cutting off a very large part of their European market. I think mechanisms would be put in place to prevent French users from going to another country's I-tunes site. My daughters will not be be happy.

Apple has some tough decisions to make. I wonder if they'll think longterm this time.

Ipod owners are not forced to buy songs exclusively from Apple. Ipods support MP3s and they're rather easy to import into Itunes.

THis is true. Songs downloaded from itunes cannot easily be played in another player however. INstead. they must be converted from the Apple format to mp3 or wav, but there are many shareware or cehap programs out there that let you do this (although perhaps not legally).

Sorry, "forced" was too strong a word.