Thon Puts Squeeze On Apple

The two-year battle to force Apple to make iTunes songs compatible with rival music players continues, as Norwegian consumer ombudsman Bjoern Erik Thon is the latest to threaten legal action.

He intends to drag Steve Jobs’ company before the country’s Market Council, a trade body that has the power to levy fines and order changes to business practices.

Many European consumer groups believe that making iTunes music store inaccessible to any device other than Apple’s iPod is an unfair trade barrier.

Announcing the move Sept. 29, Thon told Reuters he hoped other countries would follow the Norwegian lead and file their own cases against the U.S. computer giant.

He said that iTunes hasn’t met his demands to change its DRM (digital rights management) system to make its music available for all music players, and gave the company until Nov. 3 to respond.

“I want them to make their services interoperable so that you can play music bought on iTunes on other devices, including mobile phones,” he said. “The consumer’s freedom of choice in the online music market is an important right.”

Thon has had a two-year dialogue with iTunes that has led to some improvements in the contract terms for downloading music, but there hasn’t been much progress on the main issue of the availability of iTunes music.

Thon’s office, which is an independent government agency, has worked together with consumer protection bodies in Scandinavia, Germany and France to put pressure on iTunes.

“Next we will try to gather a number of countries to support the case, although this case will be brought in front of the Norwegian Market Council and handled according to Norwegian law,” he said.

“It’s important to show that we have a broad alliance of consumer bodies backing us, and if we win this case, I hope they will follow in our footsteps and take action.

“It’s a consumer’s right to transfer and play digital content bought and downloaded from the Internet to the music device he himself chooses to use, but iTunes makes this impossible or at least difficult, and hence, they act in breach of Norwegian law.”