Norway’s best consumer advocate is planning to ask a government court to force Apple Inc. to open the iTunes music store to users who own music players other than the iPod.

Thus Bjoern Erik Thon is taking Apple to the country’s Market Council in a campaign that began two years ago. The campaign is also backed by Finland, Denmark, France, Germany and the Netherlands.

It’s a known fact that songs purchased and downloaded through iTunes are designed to work with Apple's market-leading iPod players but not competitors' models. On the other hand iPods generally cannot play copy-protected music sold through non-Apple stores.

"It's a consumer's right to transfer and play digital content bought and downloaded from the Internet to the music device he himself chooses to use. iTunes makes this impossible or at least difficult, and hence, they act in breach of Norwegian law," Bjoern Erik Thon said.

According to the report Apple has until November 3rd, 2008 to respond to the complaint, although Thon is perfectly aware of the fact that the Market Council won’t decide on the case until early next year. But sometimes patience can be golden.

Thon also explained that consumer advocates from Nordic nations also discussed the issue amongst themselves two weeks ago and “decided that Norway will do the test case,” Thon said by telephone.

Steve Jobs made his position on the matter last year when he expressed Apple’s decision to take some action in the matter presented above, but it’s all up to the record labels in the end to agree to sell the music in this format. However Apple has made some moves to free iTunes-purchased tracks from its iPod line of players, including DRM free music starting in May 2007 since the Apple DRM is on top of the AAC that locks tracks into Apple, and also the premium open format is AAC, not MP3.