How to make Apple abandon a market.

There is this twisted notion of anti-trust floating around in some corners. The notion has to do with ‘busting open’ i-tunes even though there is nothing really monopolistic about a artist choosing to sell their work on it, nor does a buyer have some sort of natural right to be able to purchase it in the desired format.

They just don’t DO open product development anyway.

Business week’s technology commentator Arik Hesseldahl writes:

«For its part, Apple hasn't yet commented on the pending legislation or any changes that may result from its passage. But this is isn't the first time Apple has been hassled for the way it does business in France. Last year, Apple's French unit was sued by the Union Federale des Consummateurs -- Que Choisir (UFC-Que-Choisir). The consumer group accused Apple of violating consumer law by not mentioning that iTunes songs don't work with other brands of players, and thereby tying sales of the two products. Apple is fighting the suit.»

What if you wanted to buy a book in the B3 format and not “trade size”? What exactly are your ‘rights’ to that? Look at it this way – on one side you have a ‘foreign’ entity in Virgin with sought legislation favorable to them, and in the other case Vivendi Universal doing the same. The messenger, or complainant, mattered more that the concept. Like the ongoing anti-Microsoft zealotry anti-competitiveness is confused for ‘the killer app.’

«And in 2004, VirginMega tried to force Apple to open up the iPod so that French customers of other services could play their music on the player. That complaint was rejected by the French Competition Council, which said access to the iPod wasn't indispensable to the development of the digital-music marketplace.»

It is the equivalent of passing a law saying that a newpaper had to be translated into every known language because the medium isn’t universal, regardless if it isn’t free for the stealing – my synapses just don’t do Finno-Ugric languages, THEREfore...

Like the EU’s passion play about Mircosoft “bundling” becomes the lame excuse. In that case, insisting that people are too stupid to download RealPlayer, Opera, Eudora, or Firefox becomes the pretext.

It’s only use, if any, is as a large scale cultural fig leaf and stalling tactic. Like tariffs in low performing economies, When domestic development is lagging, bully your way in with laws and various things you’re trying to call anything other than what they really are - embargos. If you can’t be a smart player in a market what really is the solution? Spend 30 years pouring money taken forcibly from the citizens as they did with Airbus or let a freer market develop on its’ own?