Sorry, folks, but the prospect of protracted French farce in the form of a bitter Apple courtroom battle has just gone up in smoke. Remember when Virgin Mega asked to license Apple's FairPlay Digital Rights Management system (so it could sell iPod-compatible song downloads) and was told, just like RealNetworks, to go play in traffic? Well, instead of reverse-engineering its own iPod compatibility without Apple's consent like Real did, Virgin Mega went a far more predictable route: it tried to sue the license-denying bejeezus out of Apple, claiming abuse of market dominance under French antitrust law in hopes of forcing the company to open up FairPlay. My, isn't it refreshing to see Apple attacked as an abusive monopoly for a change?

Well, don't get too used to it, because like we said, the whole lawsuit just went kaflooey. Faithful viewer David Poves dished us a CNET article which reports that the French Competition Council has flat-out dismissed the case, thereby denying the world the joy of watching equal parts heartwrenching drama and side-splitting slapstick unfold during a prolonged court battle. And just why did the Council feel the need to nuke our fun before the party even got off the ground? It cites a "lack of 'sufficiently convincing elements'" in Virgin Mega's claim that Apple has to license FairPlay to anyone who wants it or else dire consequences will befall the entire music download industry and inside of two years we'll all be walking around trying to listen to AM radio through a small speaker plugged into a potato or something.

Basically, Virgin Mega's big mistake was not realizing that the members of the council have eyes, ears, and brains in their heads, because thusly equipped, they were able to see perfectly plainly that "access to the FairPlay DRM isn't indispensable to the development of legal platforms for the downloading of online music." Indeed, as long as the company's arguing to someone with at least three of their five senses intact and more than six functioning brain cells, it's kind of tough for Virgin Mega to persuasively claim otherwise, given the obvious existence of a slew of non-FairPlay download services such as Napster, Rhapsody, MusicMatch, MSN Music, Wal-Mart, etc. (Sure, you can point out that none of those businesses is exactly making money hand over fist, but we never said they were profitable music services.)

So, since anyone can start up one of these services without a FairPlay license in hand and customers can choose from a number of those services and from literally dozens of compatible devices, where's the abuse? After all, just because an overwhelming majority of those customers choose iTunes and iPods doesn't mean that Apple has a monopoly. What it does mean is that Apple makes products and services that don't suck eggs. As far as we know, that's still not against the law, even in France.

The French Competition Council apparently agrees, so for now, at least, it doesn't look like any government is stepping in to force Apple to let every two-bit little music download store out there climb onto the iPod for a free ride to Coolsville. Sorry about the lack of ensuing courtroom drama, but let's face it: you aren't too crazy about subtitles anyway.