You've really got to hand it to France. 

Suffering from severe racial riots, thousands of torched automobiles littering French streets, a stagnant economy, dangerously high unemployment, disgraceful complicity with Saddam Hussein via the U.N. oil-for-food scandal, voters' rejection of the proposed E.U. charter, a humiliating loss in the World Cup final, and expulsion of adored soccer captain Zinedine Zidane for head-butting an opponent during the final match, how do French lawmakers react? 

By targeting Apple's iPod, the innovative, immensely popular, and conspicuously American music device. 

The French government, apparently unconcerned with more pressing crises, has enacted legislation requiring that Apple open its iTunes online music store and iPod devices to competitors' products.  Under the new law, Apple must surrender its sensitive access codes to any competitor that wishes to offer compatible music players and stores.  According to French Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, "any artist's work that is legally acquired should be playable on any digital device."  How enlightened of him. 

What will French lawmakers think of next?  Legislating that Italian soccer players disclose to French goalies where they intend to kick the ball in future World Cup playoffs? 

Naturally, Apple's music-industry competitors applaud the French legislation, asserting that Apple should be forced to make iTunes and iPods compatible with rivals' inferior products.  That's akin to Yugo asserting that Toyota should be forced to make its engines compatible with Yugo's jalopies, or Royal Crown Cola asserting that Coca Cola should be forced to disclose its secret formula. 

Unfortunately, this constitutes merely the latest example of a more comprehensive assault against successful American companies across the world.  For example, E.U. members Britain, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Poland are considering similar legislation against Apple. 

As another example, the E.U. recently fined Microsoft ?280.5 billion ($357 million) for failure to surrender its valuable software codes with competitors.  Microsoft's plea that such forced disclosure amounts to giving competitors a leg up on Microsoft's own hard work and innovation fell upon deaf ears. 

This fine follows a record ?497 billion fine in 2004, when the E.U. demanded that Microsoft disclose its proprietary codes to inferior competitors.  According to the E.U., Microsoft had committed the unforgivable sin of attempting to win market share.  Imagine that – a company attempting to maximize its profits and market share.  Is it any wonder that the E.U. suffers from stagnant economic conditions and unemployment more than twice the U.S. rate? 

This E.U. campaign reflects a modernized Marxist axiom "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his demands." 

Or perhaps "from Americans according to their achievement, to Europeans according to their inferiority." 

Setting aside levity toward European pettiness and ineptitude, however, Americans should be alarmed by these attacks against intellectual property rights of American companies, and recognize their vital interest in protecting them.  Forcing American companies to surrender intellectual property to European competitors will chill innovation, and ultimately destroy their incentive to create new products and technologies. 

In our increasingly-digitized worldwide economy, intellectual property rights simply provide the engine that drives our economy and innovation.  By assuring that innovators' investment of time and resources will enable them to earn money from their creations, intellectual property rights create an incentive toward inventing new technologies.  Without intellectual property rights, in contrast, competitors can obtain a "free ride" from entrepreneurs' hard work and creativity, rendering innovators unable to recover on their sizable investments.  The consequence will be less incentive to create, and fewer novel products for consumers. 

Simply put, people who invest time, effort, and resources into inventing something naturally seek assurance that their investments will be rewarded. 

After all, would Thomas Edison have persisted in his exhaustive trial-and-error without the prospect of benefiting from his efforts?  Would Bill Gates have started his venture without a guarantee that the fruits of his ingenuity and capital investment would come to him, rather than a competitor capitalizing upon his ideas?  Of course not. 

But not everyone views intellectual property rights the same way that Americans do, as illustrated by E.U. and French lawmakers.  Anti-intellectual property activists across the globe advocate eliminating patent and copyright protections, analogizing them to free speech.  To such activists, inventions are a form of "community property" that others should be able to appropriate and disseminate, believing that this somehow results in greater consumer choice. 

The consequence of ongoing assaults on intellectual property will be drastically fewer consumer choices and less innovation. 

The U.S. government, which has remained inexcusably silent in the face of this worldwide intellectual property assault, must act immediately to protect American companies and consumers.  Otherwise, the American economy, ingenuity and consumers will pay an intolerable price.