News

French School Gets iPod Deal

Thursday, March 23rd, 2006 at 8:35 AM - by Staff

While the French government has been working on legislation that has Apple up in arms, the iPod maker has been finalizing a deal to provide video capable iPods to the students at HEC, a business school outside of Versailles. The program Apple is launching is very similar to offerings at Duke and Stanford Universities in the United States.

According to BusinessWeek, Apple and HEC have entered a two-year partnership where Apple will integrate its technologies into classes and lectures. The deal includes servers, software, service and support all donated by Apple.

Initially, about half of the school lectures will be recorded on video, rendered, and made available to students within about an hour after they are presented. Other school resources, including campus information and language classes will come pre-loaded on each student's iPod.

If the program at HEC goes well, Apple expects it can start rolling out its University iPod program at other schools across Europe.

Apple does not know what impact the proposed French digital rights management and copyright law will have on its agreement with HEC.

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Tiger said:

member since 17 Jun 2003 with 1018 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Thu Mar 23, 2006 10:48 am

But what if Apple dumps France? Could be an interesting conundrum.

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A guest said: (hide)

Thu Mar 23, 2006 11:08 am

Tiger wrote:
But what if Apple dumps France? Could be an interesting conundrum.

No it could be an interesting йnigme. I am starting to love that translation widget

Yes, it is interesting in regards to the DRM issue. However, schools are using iPods for podcast lectures and things other than music.

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Tiger said:

member since 17 Jun 2003 with 1018 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Thu Mar 23, 2006 11:39 am

The widget has no translation for the term I used.

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Engine Joe said:

member since 29 Jun 2004 with 413 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Thu Mar 23, 2006 12:09 pm

I assume Apple would only dump iTMS from France -- not iPods or any other products. And if they do drop iTMS, I can't see how it would that affect this deal at all...

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macinnerd said:

member since 15 Jun 2005 with 1748 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Thu Mar 23, 2006 1:30 pm

I don't really expect Apple to close the french iTMS. They may be obliged to loosen security features on their downloaded products, but this shouldn't hurt iTunes sales.

The fact that Apple is now starting iPod programs with universities is a good thing, as people will have more awareness of the brand, and this should also improve the way students receive information. It's a win-win situation.

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Biff said:

member since 08 Apr 2004 with 1479 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Thu Mar 23, 2006 2:04 pm

macinnerd wrote:
I don't really expect Apple to close the french iTMS. They may be obliged to loosen security features on their downloaded products, but this shouldn't hurt iTunes sales.
Error #1. They cannot just "loosen security features" because those features were demanded by the record companies that signed the deals with Apple. Apple didn't just put DRM in there for the heck of it. They were given no choice.

Error #2. The law does not say anything about the "strictness" of DRM. It says the entire thing has to be opened and essentially provided to anyone who wants to use it. BIG difference.

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