The world of music

The relationship between the market and law is often fraught - the competition element of our project being revealing in this regard. Particularly interesting at present is the question of interoperability, innovation, regulation and legislation - which is a long way of saying the Apple wars. There have been previous posts on the blog about the French legislation, and colleague Nicolas Jondet gave an excellent paper about this at the Edinburgh conference last week.

Most interesting, however, is that shortly after a law (not uncontroversial in itself, and there is also the small matter of EC competition law and free movement of goods) is finally passed, the market does indeed catch up; the linked article provides an excellent summary of the media story of the minute. EMusic enters Europe, there may be greater choice for consumers, even if the products are not interoperable: the iPod and iTunes might no longer be the main market player. Which may raise the question: is the goal protection of consumers or protection of competitors?