France’s crusade against Anglo-Saxon incursions into its culture has entered cyberspace. To the list of alien influences the French establishment is determined to resist — ranging from words such as ‘weekend’ and ‘cheeseburger’ to radio broadcasts of British pop songs and hostile cross-border takeover bids — have been added two American giants of the internet: Google and Apple.
This year President Chirac has announced two publicly funded initiatives to create French replicas of successful Google enterprises, while across the Seine in the Assemblée Nationale, French parliamentarians have passed a Bill potentially driving a stake through the heart of Apple’s iTunes music business. Regardless of whether Chirac and the French parliament have the power in practice to restrain these global businesses, their actions call into question both the wisdom and legitimacy of such intervention. Chirac should not be surprised if his actions — in this sphere as in so many others — are interpreted more as populist gestures than sensible policy.
The first and most ambitious of his initiatives is Quaero (Latin for ‘I seek’), a joint Franco-German project supported with E450 million of French public funds, to build a technology platform capable of searching text, audio and video files on the internet. It is a collaboration between Thomson and state-controlled France Télécom on the French side and Bertelsmann and privatised Deutsche Telekom on the German, and it is one of six technical grands projets unveiled by President Chirac in April. ‘We’re engaged in a global competition for technological supremacy,’ said Chirac as he announced his state-sponsored Google lookalike. True enough, perhaps, but the question remains whether attempting to replicate the hugely successful original makes any sense.
Chirac’s second jab at Google is Géoportail, a project run by l’Institut Géographique National (the equivalent of Ordnance Survey) with the help of E6 million of public funds that last month launched its version of the popular Google Earth application for France and its overseas territories. Google Earth is perhaps the most engaging product to have emerged from Google’s labs, allowing internet users to view aerial photographs of any location in the world at close range. Your street in London, your villa in the Maldives, the top-secret military installations of many global troublemakers — all can be spied on via Google Earth with a few clicks of a mouse. Google Earth has been downloaded on to more than 100 million computers since its launch last year.
Géoportail was launched in July with another Chirac rallying cry: ‘This is a step forward for all citizens, which places France at the forefront of new technologies.’ Unfortunately, it was such a hit that it crashed on its first day when some five million users tried to connect at once. And Google Earth fans quickly homed in on sensitive spots that had been blanked out on the Géoportail map — including naval dockyards, military airbases and even the President’s family home — then downloading images of them and posting them on a variety of mischievous websites.
Meanwhile the French parliament had turned its attention to Apple Computer. In response to an EU request to align French copyright laws with the Continental norm, culture minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres put forward a Bill that would force online music sites such as Apple’s iTunes to make the software that protects their songs compatible with all portable music devices. A watered-down version of the Bill was passed in June. ‘This text affirms a new principle, interoperability, which makes France a pioneer country in Europe,’ said Donnedieu de Vabres. Apple’s spokesman, by contrast, compared the Bill to ‘state-sponsored terrorism’.
The issue goes to the heart of Apple’s online music business. When we download songs from iTunes and other legal sites, they come with copyright protection software that prevents us redistributing the content without the artist’s or producer’s permission. Since the launch of its iconic iPod music player five years ago, Apple has chosen to make the iTunes version of this software incompatible with other portable music devices. In other words, music we buy from iTunes can be listened to only on Apple’s portable iPod device, and music downloaded from other legal sites such as Napster, MSN Music or Sony’s Connect cannot be played on an iPod.
The French culture minister claims that this runs against the interests of both consumers and artists. Making music available on all systems would make more of what he calls ‘digital culture’ available to a wider audience and would provide more opportunities for artists to profit from their work. Maybe, but the question remains whether the French government has the right to disrupt Apple’s business in this way.
Pro-market commentators point out that this so-called problem is merely a by-product of Apple’s hugely successful online music strategy. iPods accounted for three quarters of all portable music players sold in the US last year, and iTunes is the preferred destination for legal music downloads worldwide. By integrating the two products from launch, Apple has created a virtuous commercial circle, with the popularity of iTunes fuelling an ever-increasing stream of profitable iPod orders, which in turn ensures a large and loyal customer base for the low-margin but highly strategic iTunes store.
The iTunes Law was already diluted by the time it passed through the French parliament, and last month, in a setback for the parliamentary crusaders, the constitutional council demanded further redrafting on the grounds that the Bill runs counter to the principle of property enshrined in France’s 1789 Declaration of Human Rights. Nevertheless it may still cause problems for Apple. The Scandinavian countries, Poland and Switzerland are considering their own versions of the law, and music labels are hoping for the chance to renegotiate the terms of their iTunes agreements. Apple faces up to $700 million in fines if it does not comply, but may choose simply to pull out of the French market instead — another successful swipe at US hegemony, French protectionists would claim.
Whatever your views on state intervention, it’s hard not to admire France’s nerve at taking head-on the powerhouses of Silicon Valley. France has a history of grand investments in technology, with some notable achievements. The Airbus in better days, the TGV and that great harbinger of the internet, the Minitel — which allowed French telephone subscribers to use a range of online services long before the worldwide web came along — all point to an ambitious approach to state-led innovation.
But as Chirac committed E450 million of taxpayers’ funds to the Quaero project, he would have done well to recall that in the end those clever little Minitel boxes were no match for the force of the global internet revolution. Even half a billion euros pales into insignificance alongside Google’s research budget, which this year runs to $1.2 billion, most of it devoted to search techno-logy. What might French taxpayers have got for their money if it had been ploughed into university research, or grants to support innovative new-technology businesses? Much more, perhaps, though not in the form of grands projets.
In the end the market and the courts will decide the outcome of this latest French crusade. In the meantime, here’s one final amuse-bouche that may help predict the future. Followers of the Tour de France cycle race had an added incentive to visit the official Tour website this year: three-dimensional maps of the Tour’s gruelling mountain stages to help fans follow their heroes’ travails. Who provided this ingenious service? Google Earth, of course.
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