INFORMATION SOCIETY : CONSUMER GROUPS STAND UP TO APPLE.

After initiating proceedings against Apple in 2006, five consumer organisations have decided to join forces to defend European users of that firm's music downloading site, iTunes.

Their demands are fuelling the current debate on the use of digital rights management (DRM), the technology used to restrict consumers' right to listen to musical works bought on the internet, to set the authorised number of copies and to monitor transfers to other digital media. While the major players do not seem prepared to give up DRM and the electronics industry praises it to the skies in the...