Given that the advent of the iTunes Music Store sort of turned Apple into the poster company for "doing what's right" and paying for music, you'd think the company would play it pretty straight and narrow when it comes to paying licensing fees and royalties and all that other legal hoo-haa, right? But maybe not; the evidence in that Eminem case looks almost airtight and indicates that Apple used a song in a commercial without licensing it first, and its argument in the Beatles lawsuit that the iTMS doesn't constitute "being in the music business" because it's just "data transmission" sounds a little thin. And now it sounds like Apple is facing the ire of a whole foreign government over unpaid royalties.

[ALERT: Cheap joke imminent!]

Relax, though; it's only France.

[ALERT ends. We apologize to the French.]

Yes, folks, French site Ratiatum appears to be claiming that Apple owes over eighteen months' worth of back royalties on iPod sales. Since our French is only about as good as our genetic engineering (we attempted to become gods by creating an inconquerable race of atomic supermen and wound up with a wide-mouth bass that quacks underwater), we relied heavily on Babelfish's auto-translation to figure out what's what; apparently in France there's a tariff on MP3 devices that scales based on storage capacity, and any iPod sold in the country is subject to a € 10 royalty payable by Apple to be "redistributed between the artists and the producers of music." Given the iPod's market share, fees on a year and a half's worth of French iPod sales probably comes to a hefty total, or, as Babelfish puts it, the check Apple owes France "must be salted and difficult to sign." We're not sure where the salt enters into it, but whatever.

As of yet there seems to be no word from Apple on why it refuses to pay the fees imposed by "Members of the Commission brown-bush, as unanimously of the whole of the 24 members, except notable UFC-That-Choosing it for the consumers." (Brown-bush? Actually, forget we asked.) It might be a simple oversight, it might be some philosophical objection to the nature of the fee, or it might be that Steve just told CFO Fred Anderson to shred the bill, because "What are they gonna do about it? They're the French." Only time will tell. Maybe.

By the way, if you're wondering what Steve's saying in the caricature, it's nothing dirty. (Darn.) Sherlock translates it as "Yes I will sign it this check! Let me find my pen initially!" Must be an old Jerry Lewis gag or something. It does get funnier, however, if you translate it back into French, and then again into English: "Yes I will sign it this check! Let find my pencil reader at the beginning to me!"

But we still weren't satisfied, so we translated it into Japanese and then back into English: "It is and I this check sign to that! To in the discovery my beginning which is authorized the reader of my pencil!"

Now that's more like it. Meanwhile, we're two for two so far on linking to French articles this week; suppose it'll turn into a regular thing? Maybe-- but only if those guys keep digging up the dirt. As long as it's drama, the language is irrelevant. Want proof? Just watch those soaps on the international channels. Creepy.