A Stitch in Haste

After years of baselessly harassing Microsoft for selling a product that people want to buy (solution: force them to sell a product people don't want to buy -- to make them better off), Eurocrats are now setting their sights on Apple:

The Dutch consumer protection agency became the latest in Europe on Thursday to pressure Apple Inc. into changing restrictions that tie songs bought on iTunes to its market-leading iPod players.

Consumentenbond spokesman Ewald van Kouwen said his group had filed a formal complaint with the Dutch antitrust watchdog NMa asking for an investigation into what he called "illegal practices" by Apple's iTunes online store.

"What we want from Apple is that they remove the limitations that prevent you from playing a song you download from iTunes on any player other than an iPod," van Kouwen said. "When you buy a music CD it doesn't play only on players made by Panasonic. People who download a song from iTunes shouldn't be bound to an iPod for the rest of their lives."

The Dutch complaints follow similar ones from consumer-rights groups in Germany, France and the Nordic countries.

This is, of course, utter nonsense.

First of all, digital music is not a natural resource. A file format is not centuries-old technology that anyone and everyone can share and that Apple is now somehow "stealing" or "hoarding." They invented their particular format, and people are free to embrace it or shun it as they see fit. And if many, most or nearly all Europeans are indeed embracing it, then wouldn't that suggest that the best course of action is no action at all? Why should offering people what they want be considered either an offense or offensive?

Apple has competition, both within the narrow market of digital music and in the broader market of "music" generally. If iTunes continues to thrive, it will only be because it continues to indenture itself to its customers. This, to a European, is somehow a sin.

The "Panasonic - CD" analogy is particularly retarded (not least because the compact disc was invented by Philips and Sony, not Panasonic). The correct analogy would be a law requiring all CD players to also play cassettes, or to include a radio, or to have both European and American plugs. Requiring a company to sell a product that customers don't want simply does not make those customers better off, especially if (when) the company, facing higher costs, raise prices or exits the market altogether.

Let's hope the Eurocrats don't force Apple to "Think Different" about doing business there.

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Did I mention Microsoft?

A coalition of rivals charged on Friday that Microsoft's new Vista operating system will perpetuate practices found illegal in the European Union nearly three years ago.

The European Commission found in 2004 that Microsoft used its dominance to muscle out RealNetworks and other makers of audio and video streaming software and that it made its desktop Windows deliberately incompatible with rival's server software.

Those "practices found illegal" were, again, selling a product people wanted to buy. Go figure.

Antitrust laws do not protect competition, they protect competitors -- who, recall, are not "consumers." How sad that Microsoft's "rivals" are seeking unearned enrichment via the coercive power of corrupt governments.