iTunes User Sues Apple Over Lock-In

GregChant writes "It seems like Apple can also be at the receiving end of a lawsuit, too: Californian Thomas Slattery filed suit against Apple because 'Apple has turned an open and interactive standard into an artifice that prevents consumers from using the portable hard drive digital music player of their choice'. With over 200 million songs sold, and Apple controlling over 80% of the hard drive digital audio player market, is this just a case of someone just trying to cash in on Apple's success? Or is this genuinely an issue of buyer lock-in and monopolistic practices?"

Comments

Re:The answer for apple.

[geoffspear]

The music industry will not allow Apple or anyone else to sell digital music online without DRM. And since the whole reason Apple wants to sell music online is to make the iPod more attractive, they're going to stick with their own proprietary DRM.

What "point" do you think is defeated, and what problem do you think you're solving for them? It's incredibly unlikely that Apple will lose this suit; they don't really have a problem.

But Apple's DRM is not licensable

[spud603]

The issue is that Apple will not license their DRM to play on anything other than apple computers and apple ipods. Therefore, if you want to be legal, you have to use apple's hardware to play itunes-purchased music.

Windows Media DRM scheme, while more oppressive in most ways, is licensed to several different portable players (i believe).

This, to me, has been the most obnoxious part of apple's DRM since the beginning. Overall, it's pretty lenient, but it does lock the music buyer into apple's hardware from a legal, not to mention practical, standpoint. People aren't going to buy a Zen player, then burn all their music to CD, then rip it all into MP3 at a loss of quality.

Whether the issue is lawsuit-worthy, on the other hand, is arguable. I, for one, don't think so. I think it's obnoxious on the part of apple -- just as so much of what microsoft does is obnoxious -- but probably not illegal.

Re:Bogus

[AstroDrabb]

One has to wonder if this is an effort by some company to force Apple to open up the iPod without having to pay Apple to license it like HP has. Somebody somewhere is always trying to get something for free.

But the thing is, is that Apple will not license FairPlay. They didn't license FairPlay to HP so that HP could use it in their _own_ players. Apple just allowed HP to re-sell iPods. There is a huge difference.

If Apple would just license FairPlay, people/companies wouldn't be complaining. As it is now, Apple wants to keep FairPlay locked up to lock customers into the iPod and iTMS. I really don't see how this is any different that what MS does that gets all the Apple fans screaming against MS.

Re:Bogus

[bynary]

"contunually lose audio fidelity and quality everytime you go through another coding step."

Just like you lost quality when the sound studio mixed the album and encoded it to put it on a CD. The only way you're going to get a perfect reproduction with all the clarity is to go listen to a live concert. Even then you have to deal with noise on the speaker wire, distortions caused by a bad mic, or the occasional bleed from a radio station.

I agree that the solution isn't ideal, but he cannot make the claim that he was "forced to buy an iPod." Sounds to me like he just didn't do his homework before he downloaded iTunes. I wonder if he bought a DVD player to watch VHS movies?

The lawsuit isn't over sound quality, and it's no secret that the buy-burn-rip method will allow this guy to do what he claims he can't. Hopefully he'll get nowhere with this.