US Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez has publicly supported Apple Computer on the issue of the proposed French law that will, among other things, allow Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies to be legally circumvented. Secretary Gutierrez said that more study is needed but "any time something like this happens, any time that we believe that intellectual property rights are being violated, we need to speak up..." The law, which was passed by France's lower house last week, would both make it legal to break open DRM technologies and also force music download services to only sell music files that would work on any digital music player. Both of these conditions rub Apple the wrong way because songs sold by iTunes can only be played back on the iPod, and, more importantly, the law would allow consumers to break songs out of their DRM wrapper and share them more easily (sharing and downloading would still be illegal, but with relatively low fines). Apple has called the proposed law "state-sponsored piracy."

[via MobileMag]