Geeks, The New Cultural Icons

Interesting to see a typical European approach to American electronic innovation. Having failed to come up with products that anyone would want to buy, let alone decent music, (French pop is ear-destroying rubbish), the French have decided to punish the world’s coolest company, Apple. So a digital format for encoding songs is “online culture”? I wonder what the geeks in Silicone Valley who thought up the iPod think of that?

France's Lower House of Parliament passed a law on Tuesday that could challenge Apple Computer's dominance of the online digital music market by making it open its iTunes store to portable music players other than its iPods.

"These clauses, which we hope will be taken up by other countries, notably at the European level, should prevent the emergence of a monopoly in the supply of online culture," Richard Cazenave and Bernard Carayon, National Assembly deputies from the ruling UMP party, said in a statement on Tuesday.

The US take on this?

"The vote today by French lawmakers is a direct attack on Apple's ability to design its own products and on the company's intellectual property rights, which will have a chilling effect on future innovation," said Jim Prendergast, the executive director of Americans for Technology Leadership.

"Apple could immediately pull its iTunes product from France, giving consumers less choice when it comes to popular digital music," he added.

If only they would. Then the French could listen eternally to Edith Piaf on bulky CD players.