Slashdot Mirror
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."
Minutes. If that. reasons why anyone world will have 7700 users of most. Look at the gave the BSD sur4rise to the want them there.
Except that when you paste that one out-of-context sentence, you're completely changing the realm in which the discussion exists. This is a sentence from a legal decision. Legal decisions have to be written in a specific way and with specific language. This is not Slashdot where it's enough for something to sound right and be stated cutely. In the realm where judges write, things have to be clear, they have to be specific, and language follows a number of strange rules it does not when people like you or I discuss things.
It says x86 there because the court has to specify everything. It doesn't mean the x86 chip is important, or that the market for personal computers with x86 chips is different from or the same as the market for personal computers itself. It is simply setting parameters within which the court case arguments existed. When you strip of its context and strip it of the special meaning words have in a legal setting by just slapping it onto a page on slashdot, it no longer means the same thing.
The only thing monopolistic about the digital music business is how the record labels, through their monopoly on specific artists' music, can use that leverage to enfore draconian licensing and protection technologies on the industry.
Fortunately, the Russians are hard at work on this problem.
Yes, it's legal, even for you and me.