BRENDAN I. KOERNER — This should give the free-market aficionados over at the Economist plenty to grumble about. The French answer to ASCAP, Sacem, is threatening to sue Apple over lost music royalties. France apparently levies a fee on every blank CD, blank tape, or hard disk sold in the country, on the theory that, since they’ll likely be used to pirate music, Sacem deserves a cut. Apple apparently hasn’t been ponying up the levy of about 3.6 percent per iPod sold, so Sacem’s talking about brining the legal heat. The kicker is that, according to the AP, a 40GB iPod retails in Paris for an astronomical $677. Isn’t this the kind of callous disregard for the common man that led to lots of heads getting lopped off in 1789?
Update: Eagle-eyed reader Pieter points out that the above photo was snapped in Milan, not Paris. Zut alors! If anyone’s got a pic of an iPod with the Arc de Triomphe in the background, we’ll replace at once.
