APPLE'S BLUFF CALLED

An interesting weekend for Steve Jobs - Apple had been darkly hinting that if France passed laws enforcing more open standards across the digital music market, it would walk from the country.

They've just passed the law.

It's been watered down, making room to allow artists to sign exclusive deals which would limit their music to one format (but it's far from clear yet if, say, Jamie T could sign a deal with Apple to allow his music to be AAC'ed there, and then sign another deal with URGE to allow the same songs to be tied into the plays for sure format as well.) Questions like this will, presumably, be decided by the new body which is being set up to, well, decide questions like this.

Mind you, Jobs is probably less worried about all of this than that whole dodgy stock option problem.

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