http://www.macnn.com/articles/07/01/24/norway.rules.against.drm/Norway today ruled that Apple's digital rights management technology on its iPod and iTunes store is illegal, following a report earlier this week that both France and Germany have also decided to go after Apple's closed iPod/iTunes ecosystem.
According to Out-Law.com, the Consumer Ombudsman in Norway has ruled that the closed system is illegal because the songs, encoded with Apple's FairPlay DRM cannot be played on any music device other than an iPod, breaking Norway's laws.
"It doesn't get any clearer than this. Fairplay is an illegal lock-in technology whose main purpose is to lock the consumers to the total package provided by Apple by blocking interoperability," Torgeir Waterhouse, senior adviser at the Consumer Council, told the publication. Apple, for its part, told publications that it hopes to resolve the issues, but was vague about its future actions.