Can the French can teach Apple another lesson?

According to The Unlock iPhone Blog, the law in France says Mobile Phones must be unlockable. Engadget is summising that Apple’s supposed launch of the iPhone in France is being held up by these regulations. Maybe our European friends can teach Apple yet another lesson about doing business openly?

Remember how France faced-off with Apple over the closed iTunes compression format a back in March this year? As a result, we now have iTunes selling at least some songs with no DRM on iTunes Plus. And other stores like the new Amazon MP3 store have no DRM at all! All because the French decided to force the issue. Remarkably, it seems like they may be about to do it again:

In the United States mobile phones may be unlocked but phone operators are not legally obliged to assist you. In France however, according to a by-law passed on the 17th of November 1998, phone operators are obliged to unlock your phone, for a cost during the first 6 months of a contract but for free after the initial 6 months. All three operators have lost civil lawsuits citing this by-law: Bouygues Telecom in April 2000, France Telecom Orange in January 2002 and SFR in October 2002. Vivre le iPhone! Vivre la France! [From The Unlock iPhone Blog: iPhones in France - law says they must be unlocked]

I echo the sentiment - “Vivre La France!”

Not only is Apple now having a few problems in Europe, they’re also having one or two at home:

A California resident on Friday filed a class-action lawsuit against Apple over its controversial policies regarding the service of modified iPhones. Filed by the Law Office of Damian R. Fernandez on behalf of Timothy P. Smith, the suit alleges that Apple violated California antitrust law by prohibiting iPhone owners from using the device with any carrier other than AT&T. The suit argues that mobile phone unlocking is legal thanks to a provision in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and that Apple’s allegedly unlawful practices are forcing consumers to pay “artificially inflated” prices for the iPhone and AT&T’s service. [From California man seeks class action lawsuit over iPhone bricking, lock-in]

Do you think Apple might be getting the message yet? Probably not - I imagine they won’t start listening until they actually start losing some money… which probably won’t be anytime soon.

To make matters worse, the hackers have not been sleeping. Erica Sudan has been live-blogging her most recent 1.1.1 hack:

As if anyone expected it to stay locked down forever, the layers of security surrounding v1.1.1 of the iPhone firmware are being peeled away. TUAW’s Erica Sadun managed to get read / write access to the phone’s directories during her liveblogging session, and the hackint0sh forums are abuzz about a new hacking method that uses buffer overflow via “carefully crafted” TIFFs that crash Mobile Safari. Neither of the new hacks approach the relative ease of use that we’d seen pre-v1.1.1, but it’s still early days yet. Apple, throw us a bone here, will ya? [From iPhone v1.1.1 exploits starting to surface]

I imagine this stuff will continue for some time… Hello Apple? Anyone home? Perhaps a new approach might be in order?