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Antitrust Suit Filed To Halt Apple 'Music Monopoly'
Dotnaught writes with word of an anti-trust lawsuit filed against Apple late last month. Information Week has the story, a suit charging the company with maintaining an illegal monopoly on the digital music market. "The complaint goes beyond software licensing politics and charges Apple with deliberately designing its iPod hardware to be incompatible with WMA. One of the third-party components in iPods, the Portal Player System-On-A-Chip, supports WMA, according to the complaint. 'Apple, however, deliberately designed the iPod's software so that it would only play a single protected digital format, Apple's FairPlay-modified AAC format,' the complaint states. 'Deliberately disabling a desirable feature of a computer product is known as crippling a product, and software that does this is known as crippleware.'"
These people need to learn the difference between codecs and DRM schemes. WMA support means the hardware can decode it, not decrypt the data. You're going to force Apple to license Microsoft's DRM? That's retarded.
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The suit might have merit if the iPod would not play MP3 files or some other standard format. WMA is not a standard--hell, the "W" stands for "Windows" for crying out loud. Can Microsoft be sued for not supporting "Apple File Protocol" or some other Apple-specific protocol?
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$SUCCESSFUL_COMPANY sued for $OVERHYPED_REASON by $MONEY_HUNGRY_LAWYERS for $SOME_SCHLUB_WHO_AGREED_TO_BE_LAWYER'S_MARK
Lather, rinse and repeat.
If not, then I don't believe the suit has any merit. Even if the cost is 'only' $800,000. I'm guessing Apple still must license WMA playback even if the iPod contains a chip which is capable.
Where's the Ogg Vorbis support? I hear Microsoft specifies that player which can play protected WMA can not play Ogg Vorbis. Where's the lawsuit about that?
When the market is demanding, and receiving, DRM-free tunes at amazon, iTunes, and a number of smaller label-run sites (Deutsche Grammophon and Naxos, for example), the restrictiveness of one product to not play another's deprecated and irrelevant format is a rather trite thing. As far as I know, there's never been a precedent for "incompatibility" unless there's a contract violation clause to attach it to.
If they really want to solve the incompatibility problem, they should go out and sue HD-DVD and Blu-Ray device makers for not making players that can read both formats. Or how about a video game maker that only makes his games on PS2 and not on XBox or WII? or the other end, how about suing Microsoft for not being able to play Sony PS2 games...
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
...because that's the only way I can explain this mirror universe where DRM proponents are arguing that a product barring them from crippling your ability to do what you want with your music is itself "crippleware".
Scotty, for the love of God, get me out of here.
My iPod plays MP3's just fine. That's the most widely supported format their is. Why do they have to support WMA as well when they already support the most ubiquitous formats like WAV and MP3??
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I'll say it's lame.
I hate propriety formats and limitations but now they want to FORCE companies to build in features or supporting a format - get bent.
is playing WMA files considered a desirable feature in a portable music player?
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
And kinda funny since the Zune shipped without support for Microsofts own "Play for Sure" music.
Where do these people get this stuff?
Shipping a product without support for a desirable format? WTF? This is the whole reason we have the choice to buy hundreds of other brands of mp3 players that support both wma and ogg and mp3 as well as iTunes. I see no monopoly here.
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
If this is proven, then it should be possible to get OGG in here. In fact, it might actually be better for Apple to support OGG.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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even though the ipod is a retarded crippled heap of junk and itunes DRM is evil, there's nothing forcing you to buy it, there's plenty of other choices out there.
add to this the fact they are expecting apple to pay a license fee to put WMA on the ipod, and you get the picture of the suit bringers idiocy.
I think this stems from one of these morons who files nucance suits thinking itunes is some kind of defato standard.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
What is illegal is to use that monopoly position to unfairly exclude others from the marketplace.
iPods have been unable to play WMA since when there was only one iPod. The condition precedes any monopoly.
Microsoft is in fact in the marketplace and makes a very brown player that plays WMA just fine.
Stacie is perfectly free to buy one of those.
Next?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
As long as the consumer is fully in control of whether to choose the product or its alternatives, there is no monopoly, regardless of how many units are sold. What makes something a monopoly is the lack of "close substitutes". Clearly, that is not the case for the iPod. You may not like the appearance of other players, but there are plenty of them out there, and they are at least reasonably close substitutes. People choose the iPod because either they believe it is the best choice or they think it is hip or they have had bad experiences with other companies' products or... lots of reasons, but the lack of reasonably usable alternatives is not one of them. iPods aren't even the cheapest players out there, so you can't even argue that Apple's volume makes it impossible to compete well....
The fundamental flaw with any argument based solely on number of units sold is that there is no real iPod lock-in. With operating systems, you are pretty much locked in. The cost of buying new software to support another OS is huge, plus there are all the compatibility problems with files, etc. With music, you have a choice. You can choose to buy music from the iTunes Store if you want, knowing full well that you will have to burn to a CD and have a little quality loss if you want to move to a non-Apple player, but you can also choose to buy DRM-free music on CD, from Amazon, or even some selections from the iTunes Store. I could switch to any other player right now if somebody came out with a better one. I'd have to spend a few hours converting my protected AACs to unprotected AACs (burning to a CD and ripping it), but I could do it. The barrier to switching is basically zero, and other alternatives exist. Thus, no monopoly. Simple as that.
Caveat: IANALBIPOOSD.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
LMAO lawsuits like this are so stupid, its not like Apple is the only music player on the market buy one that does what you want.
Maybe I should sue Ford because I can't get a General Motors engine in a Focus. Where is it written all products have to support every format? Doesn't Apple have the right sell what they want and don't forget by not supporting other formats Apple is taking the risk and losing some customers who want those other formats. GROW UP people vote with your dollars. If Apple was to start losing lots of sales because they only support their own format, they would flinch and open up.
So sick and tired of people wasting court time on whiny things like this instead of voicing their opinion with their dollars. All lawsuit like this do is increase the prices of products to offset the cost of legal departments to fight these frivolous lawsuit.
"Why not?"
Say the chip supports it, and addressing the chip for WMA takes a dozen lines of code if that; then why -not- support it? As the summary says, that's just crippling the darn thing - and for what reason?
I can think of a few, most involving DRM; but Apple seems to think it perfectly reasonable to tell a user to burn a CD, then rip to MP3, if they want to listen to iTunes-DRM'd tracks on anything other than an iPod.. so surely telling the user that DRM'd WMA's will not play should suffice as far a 'tech support' goes there.
More likely, the chip vendor charges per feature used. They bake a chip that can do A, B, C, and D simply because that's cheaper than baking several different chips (do the math - there's may combinations.) Each thing it does that you license it for costs you $5 on top of a base price. So supporting A, B, D only saves you $5 per chip. That'll add up over a few hundred thousand.
I don't really see how that's a problem either.
If your mp3 player doesn't load as a "mass storage device" and let you just swap the materials back and forth, then
YOU BOUGHT THE WRONG PLAYER.
End of story.
(Sorry about shouting, but the iPod people may not hear so well anymore.)
---
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Is it?
Really?
I think that's what losers call it. I don't know that I've ever heard anyone who has known anything about computers EVER call anything crippleware.
Freaking morons. You hear about this stuff all the time, it's like the lawyers decide they can take whatever noun they want, add "-ware" to the end of it, and its some part of the technological subculture that they can use that other lawyers and judges won't have any clue that they just made it up. They'll just assume that it is part of the "technological subculture" that they don't know anything about, and, voila, we've got new terms.
Crippleware. Jesus. I don't know anyone in the industry making up nonsense like this. Do y'all?
Being unable to put iTunes music on another companies player doesn't make Apple a monopoly.
"Who said anything about DRM?"
The article.
That's uh, what it's about:
"Apple, however, deliberately designed the iPod's software so that it would only play a single protected digital format, Apple's FairPlay-modified AAC format," the complaint states. "Deliberately disabling a desirable feature of a computer product is known as 'crippling' a product, and software that does this is known as 'crippleware.' "
Some side notes:
1. This was known: http://dotnet.org.za/matt/archive/2004/02/20/460.aspx
2. The wma format itself is a non issue if you use the included iTunes software that ships with every ipod: http://www.apple.com/itunes/jukebox/importing.html
Quote "iTunes also converts unprotected WMA files to AAC."
3. If you have the rights to play it on your PC then you can convert wma files to your ipod without quality loss since it uses lossless conversion.
4. Apple created and supports a free program specifically designed to allow you to convert from wma as well as asf, wmv, wav, and ogg for the ipod: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/audio/easywma.html
It looks to me like they just didn't want to pay to license a format that, by the complaints own addmission, isn't popular enough to hold on to 20% of the online music sales and is likely to be going down since the article even points out that DRM free Mp3 download services are gaining ground.
The second part of the monopoly isue is going to take some proving since the apple ceo posted this on the apple website:
Feb 6 2007
"Today's most popular iPod holds 1000 songs, and research tells us that the average iPod is nearly full. This means that only 22 out of 1000 songs, or under 3% of the music on the average iPod, is purchased from the iTunes store and protected with a DRM. The remaining 97% of the music is unprotected and playable on any player that can play the open formats. It's hard to believe that just 3% of the music on the average iPod is enough to lock users into buying only iPods in the future. And since 97% of the music on the average iPod was not purchased from the iTunes store, iPod users are clearly not locked into the iTunes store to acquire their music."
Since the ipod is left with 97% open format playback it's just a matter of deduction to see that the other cheaper players do support these open formats and some include protected wma (Zune) and could be easily puchased instead to use protected wma files directly if the consumer wanted. Free market and all that. If the feature was so desired then the players that support it would have more that a piddling share of the sales of music players.
Last note: Napster, Musicmatch, Walmart, Best Buy and Yahoo all adopted the protected WMA music format even though apple is supposed to have a monopoly on the online music industry, interesting. I would have thought that to sell more music they would have licensed formats that easily played back on the most popular music device, the ipod. You know, to make money.
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
"...is known as crippling a product, and software that does this is known as crippleware.'" ... ....soooooooooooo my ipod isn't wheelchair accessible?
If your mp3 player doesn't load as a "mass storage device" and let you just swap the materials back and forth, then YOU BOUGHT THE WRONG PLAYER.
Yeah, because every time I turn on my device I really want to wait while it scans the ID3 information from 40 GB of MP3 files before it can display a menu of available tracks... that kind of logic worked great in the days of 128 MB flash players, but doesn't keep up with current tech very well...
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
It seems the post you're replying to was worded in such a way as to cause some confusion.
The posters problem isn't likely that he cannot place the files on his mp3 player, as would be the case if you took what he was saying literally. He likely can place the files on his player just fine, but can he play them? The problem our dear poster seemed to be getting at is that the only mp3 player that will play songs protected with Apple's DRM scheme is the iPod. He would likely only run into this problem if he had the "correct" music player (for the sake of this argument, it can be anything that isn't an iPod), that would load as a mass storage device, allowing him to place whatever he pleased on it. Then he might later discover that his fancy new music files from iTunes wouldn't play on it, since it has been fucked by DRM. So the correct response would be: "You bought the wrong music."
This isn't the simple case of buying a DVD player so you can watch DVD's. This is the case of "Buy our brand's DVD Player so you can listen to our brand of DVDs". This type of behavior makes me get stabby. (Sorry for not shouting)
If your mp3 player doesn't load as a "mass storage device" and let you just swap the materials back and forth, then
YOU BOUGHT THE WRONG PLAYER.
Err... I bought an ipod precisely for the extra features, like smart playlist syncing, collecting play stats, being able to rate songs on the ipod itself, create multiple playlists with overlapping songs but only have one copy of the song on the disk, etc, etc.
All that pretty much requires the ipod style 'database'. I don't -want- to swap the materials back and forth manually. TYVM.
I -do- agree it sucks that music is sort of hidden on the ipod, and can't be played if its not in the ipod's database, and would welcome the ability to rebuild the ipod database on the fly as a feature addition. And there are other features I'd add too.
But between choosing manual song and folder management vs ipods way... I choose the ipod. No question.
My own experience is that the cheaper the electronics, the more off-brand, the more useful it is. Apple? Sony? Microsoft? They do what they can to squeeze you into certain formats, certain online stores, etc...
But the $20 mp3 player from a chinese manufacturer I've never heard of before or after... well, that can play almost everything. Drop files into the drive and it'll play them. Same holds true for DVD players and video formats.
I was confused at first. I knew the Beatles were popular, but not that popular.
"My own experience is that the cheaper the electronics, the more off-brand, the more useful it is."
Sure. Because the small/offbrand/ etc company has to worry about getting you to buy
the product, and they do that by making it useful to you. The larger company does
not have to worry so much about this, their main worry is in
A: their bonuses,
B: the investors/wall street,
and so, work to extract the last penny from the buyer, without worrying about providing commensurate value.
emt 377 emt 4
Huh? What proprietary format? I've been playing mp3's on my iPod for years.
As said by other, iPod's chip would have the technical capability to play WMA.
BUT then Apple doesn't necessarily have the needed license to implement support for MS's IP.
That, specially from the point of view that, Microsoft's agreement in the "PlaysForSure" certification campaign forbids the player to support other formats except MP3 and WMA. (Which also eplains while in europe one can find a lot of devices playing OGG/Vorbis but not in the US where the device aren't allowed) And in addition PlaysForSure mendate an obscure and stupid protocol (a microsoftish hack around the Picture-Transfer-Protocole) for communicating with the device, whereas the iPod use plain simple mass storage and can work as an external hard disk too (except that the music is stored in an invisible folder).
This, had Apple decided to implement WMA (by simply turning on a function already available into hardware) they would have been forced to remove support for other formats namely the AAC around which their iTunes store is based, and switching away to a protocol that made the iPod a popular data-transport device.
Besides failing to support WMA doesn't make a monopoly. If we take into account all the compressed music file that circulated everywhere (on the net, on peer-2-peer networks, on embed device for various tasks including ringtones, etc)
MP3 is by far the most widespread standart.
AAC (iPod), WMA (Zune+PlaysForSure), ATRAC (Sony), Real Audio (Early webcasting), etc... all represent a tiny fraction next to the omnipresence of MPEG Layer III (and its ancestors).
And if people are complaining that the install base of linux is too low to be worth considering, I can't see why then people complain about some format that only represents a microscopic fraction of the market and is completely over shadowed by MP3.
All the others are only specific formats that are exclusively used between some proprietary music stores and corresponding audio players, and thus only exist in specific scenarios. The GSM codec (used in cell phones) is maybe the closest thing that comes in term of frequency of occurrence.
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You could just organize your music in a meaningful way. I'd suggest Artist - Album/# - Title.Extension.
I've been doing this for ages with 25 GB of music on my iPod, and just use Amarok to generate playlists (plain M3U), and Perl scripts to adjust them accordingly.
That sounds so much easier than just dragging my mp3's into iTunes and, well, being done.
Oh wait, no it doesn't.
But you WOULD be forcing a company to ADD something.
You may want to note that the chip allows the real-time decoding of WMA. This is so that WMA doesn't need to rely on the software to do all of the decoding work (which in essense makes playback on an otherwise less capable CPU possible or cuts down the CPU cycles necessary thus conserving power use).
In order to take advantage of this capability, you need to write software that accesses it. Moreover, if you introduce support for that format, you'll need to support it long after you decide not to use a particular chipset and lose the extra advantages that it supplies.
Before you go around believing the nonsense you read in a frivolous lawsuit (that not supporting all the features of a chipset is tantamount to DISABLING said features)... you should stop and think whether it even makes logical sense.
Right? You're mixing up SOFTWARE with HARDWARE.
WMA is a proprietary format also, with or without DRM. So, Apple not interested in paying royalties to Microsoft for WMA capability is monopolistic? Unless Microsoft is giving it away for free, that doesn't sound like a case. Why not sue Warner for monopolizing their own catalog? Or EMI?
Trolls
Most of the stuff on
Seriously. Apple, for all it's dominance in online music, is still a niche market.
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THANK GOD!!!
I suspect that some of the reason the small off-brand manufacturers devices are so useful is because they don't bother with such insignificant details as licensing (and the requisite fees). So they don't have to disable features the content "owners" don't want you to have. Really, they're hardware versions of allofmp3.com
And let's be fair. The iPod got huge by being useful to a hell of a lot of people, namely the vast majority that wants a round-edged managed experience. If the $20 player was useful to the masses, it would be #1 on the market. But, in cutting corners, they also tend to cut out things like english-language manuals, product testing, ergonomics, etc. You might not be able to drop a XviD onto your iPod, but download a video from iTMS, and you know it will work, period. Meanwhile, your XviD might or might not work on the off-brand player, even spending an hour with the conversion software.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
If they allow downloads in competitors' DRM formats - and honour licenses in these formats by supplying Apple-DRM'd (or DRM-free, if appropriate) versions of third-party licensed material free-of-charge - then they are not excluding any DRM vendor. Nor would they be penalising purchasers of iPods, who would be able to obtain an iPod version of a DRM-X file for free.
DRM exists to protect the rights of the copyright holder, not any third party. Apple would only need to support cross-licensing for media it is licensed to sell. If a DRM-X file is available DRM-free from iTunes due to a separately-negotiated licensing scheme with the publisher, then that's tough luck for the vendor of DRM-X: DRM-X will then serve only to lock the end-user to devices that support it, the very thing Apple is being accused of
Apple supporting third-party DRM in their hardware would signify a loss of ground in their professed ambition to remove DRM from the download scene.
Adding WMA support to the iPod will only lead to more antitrust suits because it will give Apple an even greater hold on the digital music market. Why buy any other music player when the iPod supports MP3, AAC, and WMA? It's a pretty slippery slope and I wouldn't be surprised if that's the aim of this suit.
Your ad here.
I find it strange that everyone's saying that Apple is actively disabling support for WMAs, like it supports them natively. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's not like the iPod is using fmod. Therefore, the more accurate description would be that Apple is actively not adding support for the WMA format.
I don't see the 360 supporting Wii software anytime soon, and I don't see how that's much different.
Your ad here.
Apple is not interested in paying royalties to Microsoft for WMA
Is that what the plaintiffs are asking as a remedy?
I think perhaps it's more about why there are no 3rd party iTunes stores?
Apple may have a better product than Microsoft but I'd be interested to know how the Sheman Antitrust Act applies differently to Apple than it did in The US vs Microsoft antitrust case when Microsoft excluded Netscape from its desktop. The question in law is how is Apple controlling the hardware and the content different from say Standard Oil controlling the product and the distribution system (i.e. the railroad). My guess is that this is not a trivial suit. A lot of people with ipods resent having itunes as their only option. I think that's what this suit is about. And no matter how you feel about Apple's right to exercise such control, the law on the matter may be entirely different.
Alright, I'll bite...
So if I set up rythymbox, and have it sync to a 'mass storage player' like, say, a Sansa. I can set up a smart playlist that will rotate songs based on the songs 'star rating', 'play count', 'last played date', and 'skip count'?
-and- (and *this* is the important part)
When I go off and listen to my "mass storage player" for a few days, and plug it back into my rythymbox, all that play data will sync back into rythymbox, so that it can update the playlists based on:
a) what, when, and how often I listened or skipped a track *ON THE DEVICE*
b) any ratings adjustments I made to the song *ON THE DEVICE*
The last time I tried a non-ipod, the above features, which I now view as critical, were not even close to available. And according to the research I -did- do, these features -require- an itunes like 'database' because a lot of that meta information I base my smart playlists on is not stored in the actual songs.
Now, I'm sure a 'rythymbox' type program could create its own meta-data databse, while still letting me move songs around 'manually'... but unless the player itself updated that database of meta-information as I used it, there wouldn't actually be much point.
I'd welcome finding out I was wrong... but as far as I know, only the ipod can currently do this.
I think perhaps it's more about why there are no 3rd party iTunes stores?
They're called 'buy the CD and do it yourself'. There's probably a store in your town!
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
> A lot of people with ipods resent having itunes as their only option.
I think the problem is more with the media companies bickering over DRM than Apple's iPod.
You're free to buy a Zune if that's what you want. All iTunes music can be converted to DRM-free mp3 with a modicum of effort.
No sig today...
The general music catalogs are available from other sources. It's not like iTunes/iPod prevents people from listening to music in other ways.
If you really examine the issue, WMA with DRM is the odd duck here, not iPod/iTunes.
So, what's the issue again? In a nutshell, iPod/iTunes is a relatively flexible platform on either Macs or PCs.
The IE-Microsoft-Netscape issue was about bundling IE into the operating system as an "inseparable" component. That along with a hundred other abuses surrounding Java, QuickTime, Real Media, bullying vendors, exclusive contracts etc. led to the conclusion that Microsoft was a treacherous monopolist.
Most of the stuff on
Uhm... It does apply to Apple. they aren't a monopoly. I can buy a song at Amazon right now and load it on my iPod. So is that not a 3rd party "iTunes" Store?
I can buy EMI songs on iTunes right now and load and play it on a Zune. Apple obviously controls the hardware IT MAKES, but I don't see lock in anywhere
except with the DRM that the CEO of Apple is on record that he would like to get rid of. That is mandated in contracts with producers.
If Apple is a Monopoly with its DRM then all DRM is a monopoly. I would like to agree with this, but by definition, it isn't.
I don't know about you, but I have found an even better option over at our Seattle friend's Amazon store. And it transfers songs directly to iTunes. Rather sweet, I would say. SO, there IS an option, AND it is done well, AND it is fully compatible with iTunes and thus the iPod.
/rant
So, what is the actual problem? Are we actually seeing another SCO type 3rd party stab in preparation for a big MS push into the field? Not a bloody clue. BUT, it still stands to reason that the ability for Amazon to 1-up the iTunes store seems to break their argument a tad, don't you think? It is not a closed device, really. MP3, AAC, WAV (who really uses that?!), OGG (just joking!). If you use any of those formats, it is on! And they have a right to pander to their own store with their formats if expanding the range of compatibilities means shelling out cash to one of their competitors, don't you think?
Now, I am not exactly an Apple fanboi on this, but come ON! This is just a load of crap. They have absolutely NO corner on the market. The people who were competing with apple on this were using different methods that were all based on a competing format using a subscription service method for the most part. Amazon is beginning to show major promise for taking them on and that only came about when the record companies decided they could get multiple revenue streams from different stores only if they opened it up to ALL players through other stores. That and people want unDRMed songs.
Microsoft had no monopoly in browsers when they started. Microsoft had a desktop OS monopoly. They leveraged that to kill a company whose product might, someday, indirectly have hurt their desktop OS profits. The specific leverage they applied was to sink massive resources into developing a high-quality browser, and ... not only give it away free, but threaten to hurt other companies dependent on them for making products that worked with Netscape. They lost money hand over fist on the effort.
The assertions above are not rhetoric. They're fact. Hunt up the words "malevolent" and "obsessive" in that link. When the Netscape threat was gone, Microsoft virtually abandoned browser development.
Apple had no monopoly on MP3 players or desktop OS's when they started. Apple used no leverage of any kind. They used high-quality industrial design and user-interface research, attention to detail, superb marketing and smart partnerships to earn their present spot on top of the market. They have not, ever, even once, stopped adding new capacity and features on to the iPod. The iPod has been phenomenally profitable since its introduction. Apple continued improving it at a torrid pace even when they had left the competition so far behind there essentially wasn't any, and they're still doing it today.
Here's the legal description of how Microsoft behaved:
and what the law says of people who behave that way:
and the prescribed penalties if the prosecutor decides to make it a criminal case (which he didn't):
Note that a hundred million dollars is and was chump change to Microsoft. They had a hundred seventy two times that much available in *cash and short-term notes*.
In short, "to monopolize" trade is not "to have a monopoly on a product". Publishers have a monopoly on distribution of books they publish. That isn't the same as monopolizing trade in books.
Apple have a monopoly on Mac OS X. They are not monopolizing trade in personal-computer OS's. They have a monopoly on iPods. They aren't monopolizing trade in digital music.
They law applies equally to Microsoft and Apple.
It's just that Apple didn't break it.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
Read again... iTunes Music Store. That's a separate thing from iTunes the software. You can use iTunes to manage a massive music library, transfer selected parts to an iPod with two way metadata and never buy anything from the iTunes Music Store. Most people prefer to rip CDs into their iPods and iTunes will even manage that, fetching track info and album art for you.
Most of the stuff on
I'll take you through it step by step, ok? And since this really IS informative and should be modded +5, I fully expect to be evicerated into trolldom by the idiots that modded you up.
Section 1 states: Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal.
Apple never claimed to support WMA and does NOT have a monopoly on music sales or formats. Microsoft DID claim to support other vendor's software, and in fact did support Netscape until they decided to push Internet Explorer, at which time they disabled Netscape from functioning to restrain it from competing in the same space. This is where the Standard Oil comparison comes in, but with Microsoft playing that role - they own both the OS and a browser, and strongarmed a competing browser from running on the OS. Apple does not own the major format (mp3) or the only way of getting music onto an iPod (I can think of three different ways to get this done without iTunes - see links at bottom).
Section 2 states: Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $10,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $350,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding three years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.
Again, same thing as my paragraph below section 1. Microsoft attempted to monopolize through their control of the OS. Apple can't monopolize something they don't have a monopoly on. These are two wholly different situations.
Section 3 states: Every contract, combination in form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce in any Territory of the United States or of the District of Columbia, or in restraint of trade or commerce between any such Territory and another, or between any such Territory or Territories and any State or States or the District of Columbia, or with foreign nations, or between the District of Columbia and any State or States or foreign nations, is declared illegal.
Oops, there it is again! Microsoft- restraint of trade: competitors actively stopped from competing. Apple, unable to restrain trade because it can't restrain something it doesn't have complete control of: there are at least six different alternatives to iTunes that I know of, three of which I've often seen installed out of the box on Windows PC's. I can't count the number of alternative music players that are as easily available and in most cases far more affordable than an iPod.
The rest of the sections define the rules for proceedings and limitations on this law.
When it comes to dominant userland OS's, Microsoft not only has the most distributed OS on the planet, but has actively stopped (to a large extent) competing OS's from even being a choice when you order a pre-built PC (another monopoly that they've gotten away with, at least in the US). Apple has the most distributed music player on the planet, but not because they forcibly removed others from being choices, rather they made a decent product and successfully marketed it. Nobody is forcing you to use iTunes to buy music online. You could just as well purchase it through, say, Windows Media Player. If you saved it as mp3 (hey, don't want to get all monopolistic now!) you can move these songs into iTunes and put it on your iPod. Try getting an iTunes Store or WMA file moved onto your generic mp3 player. Won't happen without some third party apps, and then I only know how to make it happen with the iTunes files (because I haven't tried with WMA).
Oh, and last but not least: the plaintiff's aren't asking for Apple to pony up licensing fees. That's the beauty of the scam: if Apple does it, Microsoft gets their money and these
Don't use the Troll mod just because you disagree with me.
While you clearly disagree, I use my computer to reduce the amount of mucking about I have to do to get simple things done.
The iTunes database does this for me.
Dragging and dropping music doesn't scale either. What is a neat system on a 256MB device is a huge pain on a 60GB device, once you factor in ID3 tags, changes, etc. It also lacks the control with auto playlists based on how often I play or how high I rate the songs. These are solid features that make a real difference. To do it your way we'd have to manually update our playlists whenever we wanted to change them.
If you're doing the work of a file system, you bought the wrong metaphor!
I use it to play back mp3 files ripped from my CD collection. I've never bought anything from iTunes, nor will I.
99% market share doesn't make an illegal monopoly - monopolies are only illegal when you abuse them and engage in non-competitive behavior.
No sig today...
You mean like the Amazon MP3 store, which, you know... exists?
Only if I wanted that functionality.
Personally, I don't give a flying fsck that my iPod doesn't look like mass storage. It doesn't diminish my enjoyment of the product at all.
By all means, apply your own standards to your own purchases. But, allow us our own. I've been completely happy with my iPod -- if I want a USB stick, they currently cost about 30 bucks. If I really need to move a bunch of data, I have an entire USB hard drive I can carry around with me.
Having iTunes and an iPod doesn't preclude me from having my MP3's ripped on a FreeBSD box and managed on a UNIX file system shared by Samba into iTunes. Me, personally, I like the way iTunes works in terms of what it syncs and all that. Different people, different needs.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Not only that, but iTunes will let you copy non-DRM'd
Furthermore, according to the GPP: Back on the topic of actively disabling WMA, how about requiring manufacturers doing more to point out supported formats? Maybe a spiky red bubble on the front of the box saying what's supported? That way, it would look like some marvelous extra, like 'batteries included' or 'one free song download'.
That's a funny complaint about Apple, considering the fact that any song that's ever been purchased from Apple's store is compatible with every iPod ever sold. Unlike the Microsoft side of things, where MS initially supported several different stores selling
I second.
What I find most staggering in the "discussion", that people dumbly say that "iPod's chip allows WMA decoding". That's *LAMEST* thing of century to say.
For Apple to be able to include WMA support into iTunes/iPod, they would have to (1) fork some money to M$ and (2) sign restrictive licensing agreements.
Have you noticed that WMA players rarely support anything but WMA and MP3? Right, only few companies (e.g. Sony for their Walkmans) managed to secure deal which allows them to support other audio formats. Semi-official info I had about SanDisk's Sansa and Philips's GoGear players is that they can *NOT* support MP4 nor OGG/Vorbis because licensing agreement with M$ prevents them to.
In all the heated IP discussion, everybody forgets that technical side of story != legal side of story. Apple cannot support WMA w/o M$ blessing.
On other side, I fully support Apple's brave decision to support standard audio format - and *NOT* invent/buy another proprietary format. On ironic side, one can always respond to dumb question "Apple doesn't support M$ audio format" with "But it does!! MPEG4 audio was developed in greater part by M$!!"
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Should there have been antitrust lawsuits against Creative when there was no way to get my (quite shitty, frankly) Rio to accept music except through their ludicrous software? Or what about Sony and their ATRAC monstrosities? Use any music you want as long as you convert it to ATRAC!
Where do we draw the line at letting hardware companies support what they want? Or should every new device support every imaginable format?
Because I'd like to point out that you can use an iPod without ever buying a single song from the iTunes store, even if you purchase your music online. MP3 support - it's not like that's some trivial, little-known fringe file-format.
Sure you have to use iTunes to move music onto the iPod. And I have to use proprietary, provided software from the manufacturer to work with a number of various hardware products and peripherals. I don't see the big deal, frankly.
Evolution ceases when stupidity can no longer be fatal.
My sister purchased an iPOD Nano for her son this Christmas. At the store she saw it required a minimum of XP. She told the sales person she was running Windows 2000 and asked if there was any chance that it would work on Win2k and he said oh yeah, lots of people are using it with win2k. Needless to say when she was trying to set it up on Christmas morning, it would not install saying minimum OS required is XP SP2.
The next day she took it back to Bestbuy and bought a Creative brand MP3 player and was delighted to see it worked on her PC and also not to be locked into one companys music files.
She learned two lessons from the experience:
1. Never trust a salesman at Bestbuy.
2. Never buy an MP3 player that is proprietary and has to have a DRM'd to hell OS.
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