‘ITunes must play fair’
Lagarde’s remarks came during a talk with reporters in San Francisco one day after meeting with Silicon Valley executives, top Stanford University officials, and French entrepreneurs living here.
Lagarde met with Charles Phillips of Oracle Corp., John Chambers of Cisco Systems, and Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems, but met no Apple Computer Inc. executives.
A copyright bill before the French parliament on downloading music and films could lead the leading online music store, Apple’s iTunes, to leave France since it would oppose opening up its proprietary system, experts believe.
Apple Computer Inc. has always refused to allow its paid-for music files downloaded via iTunes to be converted into another format, which would allow them to be listened to on a music player other than its iPod.
But French lawmakers last month adopted two amendments insisting on "interoperability," which would permit an Internet user to copy and read downloaded files on a service of his choice.
"It should come as no surprise," Lagarde said when asked what she might say of the matter to Jobs if given the chance.
"Any time a company restricts competition in a market, it gets the attention of regulating agencies.
"We have to play by the rules of the game," she said.
France and its millions of iPod using teenagers were too valuable a market for Apple to pull out of, Lagarde said.
INet-Bridge
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