French and German consumer groups are to join Nordic customers in the fight against Apple claiming that the DRM applied to iTunes tracks violates their consumer rights. They have also been joined by groups in Denmark and Sweden.

This comes after the French government changed its copyright laws but backed down from forcing Apple to license its DRM technology to other companies. Instead Apple had to renegotiate with record companies that allow them to use their own DRM on tracks they sell. This doesn't apply to Microsofts PlayForSure technology as this is freely licensed to companies.

Apples comeback? You can burn what you buy to CD and then copy it to mp3 format. To someone like me that doesn't sound too bad, but others would argue that the quality degrades when you do this.

This is a very interesting story, but I wouldn't be suprised if Apple were to pull out of certain countries if things didn't go their way in the future. Then again maybe the record industry might tend towards DRM free music in the future to encourage sales.