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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.'"
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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Yup. The solution to Apple being accused of being a monopolist is to have them license DRM from a convicted monopolist. Seems simple enough.
...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.
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.
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The PP5002c used in the first three generations of iPod (and the PP5003 used in the fourth) does indeed decode WMA.
It also has a USB interface. But the first two generations of iPod don't.
The PP5002c can decode video. But no iPods until the fifth generation did so.
The PP5002c also had lots of other logic in it that wasn't used by Apple. I can't possibly see how this is supposed to be an argument that Apple was supposed to support WMA.
Another harassment suit. I hope it gets kicked out of court quickly.
Also, if I recall correctly, the PP5002c and PP5003 were simply dual ARM7 TDMIO chips with some glue and interface logic. There's nothing there that would play WMA.
This case is baseless, groundless, and sure to get paid to go away.
From Apple's page:
Audio formats supported: AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), Protected AAC (from iTunes Store), MP3 (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 2, 3, and 4), Apple Lossless, WAV, and AIFF
Only one of the 7 formats is DRM'ed (ie. "locked"), and only 2 have any sort of Apple proprietary nature to them (Apple Lossless and the FairPlay DRM'ed AAC). They shouldn't be forced to adopt a competitor's DRM. And Amazon proved you can create an online service compatible with the iPod.
In short, they'll get thrown out of court.
E pluribus unum
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?
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