Apple is one of a number of companies that are going to get a crash course in globalization shortly - it looks like France is going to try and force them to open the iTunes store up:

It would no longer be illegal to crack digital rights management -- the codes that protect music, films and other content -- if it is to enable to the conversion from one format to another, said Christian Vanneste, Rapporteur, a senior parliamentarian who helps guide law in France.

"It will force some proprietary systems to be opened up ... You have to be able to download content and play it on any device," Vanneste told Reuters in a telephone interview on Monday.

Some people seem to think that Apple will shut down the store in France, but that's going to be hard to do - France, like the rest of the Continent (outside the UK) uses the Euro. If you use an ISP based across the border, what are they going to do? I suspect that they'll have to let it happen.

This reminds me of "daytime running lights" on cars. A few years back, Canada mandated that. Manufacturers started shipping cars that did that automatically, so that drivers wouldn't have to remember to turn them on manually. Given the easy border crossings, and the commonality between the US and Canadian car markets, most cars in the US now follow the Canadian convention, even without the matching law.

Bottom line, companies operating globally have to pay ever closer attention to the legal environment everywhere they operate.