In the past year, disenchanted French youth have staged large-scale riots over both the treatment of immigrants and employment rights.

Depending on the actions of the French Senate, the abstract matter of interoperability among digital music players and services might be next on the French protest docket.

The French Senate, the upper house of the country's Parliament, is currently debating a draft of a French law that would force Apple's iTunes and other digital music services to open the code behind their digital rights management (DRM) technology that restricts what a buyer can do with downloaded music.

The proposal, passed last month by the lower house, seeks to require interoperability among all digital music services and players, which many experts say has been the monumental roadblock that has really kept the digital music market from exploding.

The bill could potentially send shockwaves through the digital music world. If forced to open up its proprietary DRM, Apple could vacate the French market and other countries could follow France's lead.

Apple has equated the bill to "state-sponsored piracy," and it has the support of the US commerce secretary, Carlos Gutierrez.

But as the bill made its way through committee to the French Senate, as many as 256 amendments have been proposed, some of which would strip most of the teeth from the bill, including a requirement that DRM users open up the technical details of the technology and post those details online.

Those amendments have French consumer groups up in arms, with a protest planned near the Bastille on Sunday.

The French Senate will continue debating the bill next week, but if it approves any of the proposed amendments to it, the bill would be automatically thrown back to the lower house for reconsideration.

In presenting the bill to the upper house, Culture and Communications Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres said someone who pays to download music should be able to listen to it "without being the prisoner of a single system corresponding with the product range of one single company."