Apple disputes with EU Growing

Is Steve Jobs trying to create a trans-Atlantic trade issue? A report in today’s International Herold Tribune covers a growing dispute between Apple and the European Union about the digital music industry. The EU generally believes that consumers should be able to play songs from online sites on any digital music player. Songs purchased from Apple’s iTunes store, however, can only be played on the company’s iPod music players.

A consumer ombudsman in Norway last month agreed with this complaint, giving Apple until March 1 to respond and until Oct. 1 to do something about it. The ombudsman’s decision was followed by complaints from consumer groups in other Nordic countries, along with groups in France, Germany and the Netherlands. Jobs fired back last week when he wrote on his website that “Much of the concern over DRM systems has arisen in European countries” and proposed that music companies drop digital rights management software, which restricts the ability of consumers to copy songs or to move them from one digital device to another.

The Tribune noted that “in issuing a call for the record industry to drop copy protection, or digital rights management, from music sold online, the Apple chief executive, Steve Jobs, highlighted the fact that two of the big four music firms, and half of another, are owned by European companies”. Many in the EU are not buying Jobs arguments, “He’s trying to move the responsibility away from Apple and turn this into a trans-Atlantic trade issue,” said Torgeir Waterhouse, senior adviser to the Norwegian Consumer Council.