Slashdot Mirror
iPhone Antitrust and Computer Fraud Claims Upheld
LawWatcher writes "On October 1, 2008, a federal judge in California upheld a class action claiming that Apple and AT&T Mobility's five-year exclusive voice and data service provider agreement for the iPhone violates the anti-monopoly provisions of the antitrust laws. The court also ruled that Apple may have violated federal and California criminal computer fraud and abuse statutes by releasing version 1.1.1 of its iPhone operating software when Apple knew that doing so would damage or destroy some iPhones that had been 'unlocked' to enable use of a carrier other than AT&T."
They seriously need to be taken down a notch legally so they don't lawyer up at every opportunity.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
This is excellent news for consumers. About the only area that technology is seriously lacking in, is cell phones. And it isn't because we don't have the capability, the iPhone and Android platforms proves that it isn't the case, but rather it is the cell phone companies.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
per the first paragraph, the AT&T/Apple restriction is ok, but they [might have] imposed other limitations after the 2 year contract (umm, which hasn't ended for anyone yet).
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
People on other carriers that want to use the iPhone?
People who were "compelled" to get an ATT account to use the iPhone?
People who didn't get an iPhone because of the exclusivity?
Who *wasn't* damaged?
Just for the record, I have an iPhone, I was already with ATT, and Apple should have figured out that this might have been illegal beforehand.
This is where I get my recommended daily allowance of "Foot in Mouth."
Their statement was not 'we are going to brick other people's phones,' but 'if you have messed around in the baseband firmware, we can't promise this upgrade isn't going to break something significantly.'
They didn't set out to brick phones (and quite a few unlocked phones I know of took the firmware upgrade just fine). It was more a 'look, if you did this, you're on your own; we're not promising that this firmware won't completely break your modified phone.'
Which actually seems reasonably fair; if someone takes a car and decides to tinker in the brake system and try to come up with their own antilock braking system they feel is better, that's fine. But if they then have an accident, they can't realistically hold the car manufacturer responsible for the ABS they modified.
That said, the AT&T exclusivity contact may well verge on antitrust violations; IANAL, so I cannot really speak with any authority on that. However, restricting phones to specific carriers is pretty much par for the course. T-Mobile doesn't let you use the Sidekick on AT&T, nor the new Google Android phone that just came out. As far as I know, the Instinct is exclusive to Sprint. Etc.
So if they do rule that the AT&T exclusivity contract violates antitrust, I really do hope that decision can crack the practice of carrier exclusives overall. Forcing all phones to be sold unlocked, so that they can be taken to any other carrier with compatible cellular technology, would force carriers to actually focus on providing good service rather than relying on handset exclusives.
--Rachel
How is this any different than any of the other phones out there that are available exclusively through one provider or another? (Samsung Instinct etc) While I'd love to see the cell phone company walls come down, I don't think Apple is doing anything different than everyone else in this case.
-- Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new. -- Albert Einstein
All the Slashdotters who mod people down for pointing out that Apple is, was, and always will be a far more brutal monopoly than Microsoft have been dealt another crushing blow by reality.
Yes, we all know they make nice shiny electronic gadgets. But that doesn't justify their monopolistic behavior, no matter how much someone may hate Microsoft. Two monopolies doesn't make it right, and the GPL-based monopoly the Stallmanistas are trying to create will be no better.
As darkmeridian said above, this is just denying a MTD. MTDs are filed in every case, ever, and they are denied in the vast majority of them.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Seriously? Are you serious? Because there's an f'ing law against artificially tying products to services. It's illegal under current legal definitions because there's a law against it. Jesus.
No, there's only a law against tying if the party doing it has a dominant market share. The relevant market here is PDA phones, and Apple sure as hell doesn't have a monopoly in the PDA market. Maybe you should know your law before you start railing on others.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
But people are not calling their bluff so far.
Forcing people to buy one product in order to be able to buy another is a classroom example of an anticompetitive practice, which is banned in most civilized places, unfortunately most Apple fanboys are so wide eyed playing with their expensive toys that they fail to see they are being abused by the unholy alliance of phone maker and mobile telephony provider.
As soon as some of them begin to wake up and smell the coffee complaints will follow and will, hopefully, end this most abusive "business model"...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Do other carriers have EXCLUSIVE phones? Yes. although its hard to notice when they release 3 new phones a week.
Can I buy a Nextel phone to use on Verizon's network? No.
When a Windows update crashes because a third party diver was installed does Microsoft get sued? No.
My wife works for Microsoft and the tricks they get up to make this seem very tame, she works in 'Strategic Planning' and all they do all day is work out how to trip up Google et al rather than create or innovate. It's funny to be a bystander and here the stories.