France and Germany team up against iTunes (why blame apple?)

Why is apple being singled out and blamed for a problem that plagues the entire industry?
http://www.tgdaily.com/2007/01/24/ [...] many_open/

I don't really like apple, apple products, apple software, or apple users, but I really must come to Apple's defence here: it's not their fault. At best it's half their fault.

Analysis of arguments:
Problem 1: Apple DRMed songs don't play on non-apple devices because those devices don't support Apple's DRM format. This is Apple's Fault.
Problem 2: Apple devices don't support other DRMed files because apple's devices don't support that DRM format. This is also apple's fault.

WHAT!? How can BOTH those things be apple's problem? They are opposite problems and neither one of them is something they can just change for free. Either it's their fault for not supporting other standard, or it's other companies fault for not supporting their standard. But really THERE IS NO STANDARD so it's not anyone's fault (yet). They would have to PAY microsoft to be able to support playback of DRMed .wma files. Even if they did sell their DRM to other companies (which I don't think they should be obligated to do) they can't MAKE them impliment it. They have a large percentage of the mobile media player market and the online media sales market but it's not a monopolistic power. Other services are available, conusmers CHOOSE to lock themselves into a "un"compatible solution because they are STUPID.

DRM and other copy-protections suck for consumers but content providers require it. Consumers choose to buy the crap anyway. If you want to complain about how you bought a mid-grade mp3 player (the iPod) for top-dollar and now you can't port your music around to other devices because you bought it from iTunes without doing your research because it had a pretty interface and you thought it would make you "cool": tough luck to you. Don't buy crappy products next time and maybe we can all enjoy buying products from companies that feel the need to be responsible to their customers for the functionality and compatibility of their products without forcing companies to follow ridiculus legislation that may slow down the advancement of technology development and deployment.

What is the solution these european companies seek? To force Apple to make it's file format available for sale? Ok, but at what price? To force apple to pay out money to it's competitors to support their file formats? Do ALL of Apple's competitors also have to buy apple's format (at what price?).

The real solutions is an OPEN FORMAT that all companies could use freely, and then I suppose it wouldn't be entirely unreasonable to legislate that players and services support that format. Forcing companies to support proprietary formats is silly and would prevent fair competition. How is a new company supposed to enter the portable media player market if they have to shell out tons of money to Apple and MS and whoever else before they can even start marketing their product?

I don't like DRM at all, but if it copy protections were properly implemented it could at least work without causing nightmares for users and unfair market conditions. Until it is properly implemented we should all refuse to buy into it. No Napster, No Itunes, no ".wma players" (no microsoft in general*). Just say no.

* I just found out the other night that in both WMP and Zoom player windows assumes that the movie I'm playing is copy-righted and won't allow me to take a screen shot of it (I was particularly pissed as there were my own personal videos I had just made with my own camera). You end up with a picture with a magical window in it that allows only the display of your video playing software to show through it and is otherwise blank (it even worked when I saved the image then opened it up in firefox). Of course after taking a couple minutes to open up Windows Movie Maker I could pull frames out of the video no problem then paste them back into my screenshots... so what exactly was the point redmond?