Apple, France at odds over iTunes

Article Excerpt

APPLE COMPUTER INC. $62 (Nasdaq symbol AAPL; WSSF Rating: Extra risk) is fighting a proposed law in France aimed at spurring competition in the legal music downloading industry. Right now, customers can only listen to songs downloaded from Apple’s iTunes online music store on Apple’s iPod music player. The new law would force Apple to re-program these files to play on other digital music players. That would likely hurt iTunes’ leading share of Europe’s legal music download market, and cut iPod sales. The stock hit $86 in January on strong Christmas demand for iPods. But it has moved down lately on fears that sales of Apple’s new Intel-powered Macintosh computers will lag until more software that takes advantage of the new chip becomes available. Apple is a hold for aggressive investors. investors…