Filed under: Portable Audio

After all sorts of protesting, name calling and backtracking, the French legislature has finally managed to pass their DRM law that could spell a bit of trouble for iTunes and other companies bent on locking down their own respective file formats. The language has been toned down a bit from the original draft, and we don’t have a new response from Apple or a hint of how this final version might be implemented, but the basic requirement of the bill is that Online music stores provide a method for users to play downloaded files on any device, as long as device manufacturers ask nicely. More recent revisions allowed some exceptions to this rule, including if the copyright holders weren’t willing to have the DRM opened up, but from the sounds of it there are industry types on both sides of the argument. Some are jumping at the chance to price DRMed songs independently of Apple, yet still land them on the iPod. Apparently there are still a couple weeks for the law to be challenged and struck, but once it goes in action we’ll be quite interested to see how Apple and others react — a France sans iTunes?

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Filed under: GPS, Transportation

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French site
caraudiovideo, whose specialty is pretty self-evident, have information on a new Windows CE-powered Pioneer GPS
receiver that is supposedly one of the first from the company to include built-in Bluetooth. The AVIC-S1 is a
"portable" model (meaning you can port it from vehicle to vehicle, but not on your geocaching expeditions)
that features a 320 x 240 touchscreen, SiRF III chip for greater accuracy, and what seems to be 2GB of flash memory
preloaded with European maps. Any of the included points-of-interest can be dialed on your cellphone via Bluetooth, and
a choice of 17 guidance languages will help you brush up on the native tongues as you travel around the continent. It’s
not really clear when this product will be released (if it’s not out already), or how much it will go for, but until a
US version is announced, those details are a moot point to the majority of you anyway.

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