Interesting quarters are attempting to open up DRM. The French don’t seem to believe you should be tied in to any particular media type or forced to use files you’ve purchased in particular ways. They’ve got some draft legislation that’s going before their upper house that will force sellers of music in France to interoperate (Microsoft, Sony, Apple).
Originally this bill also covered DVD and video encoding measures in a similar way. Apparently the French are under the impression that you “get” what you pay for.
Now, they’re also going to enforce some pretty horrific fines for the act of (I’m assuming here) not paying for music. I’m not sure exactly how that one gets enforced… there are many derivative works and free musics out there in a “grey” area.
