Consumer groups in Europe trying to get Apple loosen up iTunes

Consumer groups in Germany, France, Norway and Finland are now going to work together to put pressure on Apple Inc. to somewhat loosen the ties between the popular Apple iTunes web store and their iPod range of digital media players.

Apple sells music and videos on their iTunes store which can only be played on their iPod range of players.

Katia Mrowka, legal expert at the Federation of German Consumer Organizations spoke on their initiative: “Several consumer agencies in Europe have taken action separately against Apple’s policy of locking iTunes customers to a single brand of music player, the iPod. By uniting, we believe we’ll be able to create greater pressure for Apple to accept our demands.”

These groups are also currently talking with consumer authorities in Sweden, Denmark and the U.K. to pursue a unified iTunes policy for Europe.

They want Apple to offer more interoperability so that consumers purchasing content from iTunes can play it on other portable players available in the market.