Apple Antitrust Case Gets Green Light

SuperAlgae writes "The recent antitrust suit against Apple regarding iTunes and iPod has been approved to go forward. This is only the beginning of the process, but it does bring up some interesting questions about what defines a monopoly." From the article: "Slattery claimed that Apple's system freezes out competitors, and while one antitrust expert called it a long shot, another antitrust law professor said that the key to such a lawsuit would be convincing a court that a single product brand like iTunes is a market in itself separate from the rest of the online music market."

Comments

Re:Two Posts

[fistfullast33l]

Don't ignore it like Mama Bell did way back when or there may be baby Apples (Applets? lol) competing against each other with Mac users completely confused as to which flavor of Apple they want.

God forbid Mac users get confused by multiple flavors of the same product. They might as well buy PC's at that point. And what about the Intel platform Apple is in the process of releasing? While most would argue it's better to buy that from a pure support standpoint then any of the PPC-based Macs since Apple is notorious for horrible warranty support (30-day warranties on the IPod anyone?), I can guarantee that Joe Schmoe still has no clue what the difference is and Apple's Black-shirted Salesforce of Doom is sure not going to help.

Okay, I might have laid it on a little thick there, but I am a little afraid of the mindwarping powers that Apple posesses.

bs arguements

[geekee]

"Let's see, here's a song I've downloaded from iTMS... here's a blank CD. Mix, Burn, stick it in a Sony Discman... that's a portable device you know... and it's just fine."

cross converting a song to mp3 by first burning to a cd is a hassle, and degrades the music quality, as well as wastes a cd-r. The file should just work as is without circumventing the DRM, but Apple refuses to license Fairplay.

"Now, let's see... I go to Amazon.com, buy a CD, it costs a little more than on iTMS"

Straw man arguement. We're talking about buying a single song online, not buying a cd, which people here love to call a dying business model.

I'd love to try a subscription service and use it with my iPod, but I can't because Apple doesn't offer one, and Apple doesn't let anyone else sell me one that includes some sort of DRM.