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Apple To Face $350 Million Trial Over iPod DRM

Posted by Soulskill on from the yearly-reminder-that-replayer-is-still-a-thing dept.

An anonymous reader writes: A U.S. district judge ruled last week that a decade-old antitrust lawsuit regarding Apple's FairPlay DRM can move forward to a jury trial (PDF). The plaintiffs claim that in 2004, when "Real Networks launched a new version of RealPlayer that competed with iTunes," Apple issued an update to iTunes that prevented users from using their iPods to play songs obtained from RealPlayer. Real Networks updated its compatibility software in 2006, and Apple introduced a new version of iTunes that also rendered Real Networks's new update ineffective. The plaintiffs reason that they were thus "locked in" to Apple's platform, and as a result "Apple was able to overcharge its customers to the tune of tens of millions of dollars". If the plaintiffs succeed, media content purchased online may go the way of CDs and be playable on competing devices.

11 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. Old issue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    This lawsuit won't change anything today. All iTunes music is drm free.

    1. Re:Old issue by Anubis+IV · · Score: 5, Informative

      Strangely, this isn't even about people suing Apple for DRM'd music that Apple sold. This is about people suing Apple over DRM'd music that RealNetworks sold which couldn't be played on the iPod because it used Real's proprietary DRM.

      What happened was that RealNetworks was running their RealPlayer Music Store back then that competed with the iTunes Store, but the iPod was the best-selling MP3 player, and tracks purchased from the RealPlayer Music Store couldn't run on the iPod since their Helix DRM wasn't compatible with the iPod. Rather than making the music available in MP3 or some other non-DRM'd format the iPod supported, RealNetworks released a tool called Harmony that converted the tracks their customers purchased from their Helix DRM to Apple's FairPlay DRM, allowing the tracks to be loaded onto the iPod. Understandably, Apple was none too pleased, both because it meant the FairPlay DRM was being circumvented, but also, obviously, because it damaged their ability to lock people in (this was about a year before Steve Jobs posted his "Thoughts on Music" open letter that called for the record labels to stop requiring DRM).

      Apple patched out the exploit that allowed Real to create their Helix->FairPlay tracks in the first place. After a few rounds of back-and-forth which ended with Real's Harmony tool being broken, Real made a lot of noise and that was that.

      Which is all to say, this case makes no sense to me. These people bought music they knew was DRM'd, wanted to use it on an unsupported device, were able to use an exploit to circumvent the DRM scheme of the unsupported device so that they could create their own DRM'd files, and were upset when that device later got patched to prevent the circumvention. If anything, they should count themselves lucky that no one decided to sue them under the DMCA for circumventing DRM protection. *eyeroll*

    2. Re:Old issue by harperska · · Score: 5, Informative

      TFA mentions that is the reason for the lawsuit. Apple used their DRM specifically for vendor lock-in to shut out competition and unfairly raise prices.

      That is RealNetworks' allegation as to the use and purpose of the DRM. Apple's rationale for using DRM on the other hand was an insistence from the record labels, according to Jobs' "thoughts on music" essay. The truth will come out in the court case, but I have a feeling that Apple's reason is probably more likely. They abandoned DRM shortly after that open letter at a time when the incentive for lock-in was probably stronger than ever, as they had just announced the original iPhone a month before the letter was published.

      With that in mind, it really is silly to claim that any patching of a security flaw is done maliciously, just like how when Apple patches a bug that is exploited by a jailbreak, they are not doing it to 'get at' the jail breakers. They are simply patching a flaw and there is no rational reason for them to intentionally leave that flaw in place.

    3. Re:Old issue by Anubis+IV · · Score: 3, Informative

      There was speculation regarding this topic at the time that as part of their contract with the record labels, Apple was being compelled to patch the holes RealNetworks was utilizing. Basically, the record labels were demanding DRM to protect their music, and Apple (which was MUCH small than it is now, keep in mind) was being forced to protect that DRM if they wanted to continue selling music. So, record label policies may very well have been both the reason the DRM was in place and the reason Apple was so quick to break any exploits that circumvented it.

  2. Re:This is typical of the "Jobs era" Apple by Charliemopps · · Score: 1, Informative

    Ever noticed every MP3 player on the market can be plugged into your computer and you can browse the music files as if it were an external hard drive? With the sole exception of the iPod? The idiocy of people buying that device still boggles my mind to this day. The iPhones the same way. Why on earth would you buy an inferior device for twice the price with no ability to manage its content on your own?!?!?!

  3. The secret with the iPod was not DRM... by cant_get_a_good_nick · · Score: 1, Informative

    You can buy mp3s from Apple now. Did all these other MP3 players suddenly jump up and be popular? Nahhh...

    There are two secrets with the iPod popularity, and neither is DRM. One is that it was, relatively to other players, easy to use. Click a button, you have a song. Drop a disc to your computer, you have an album. Yeah, I could have used CDex, and chosen between Gracenote, and opencddb.org and all that, but iTunes was a decent ripper and there you go.

    The other thing, and the thing that would keep me from moving much, is all the metadata about songs. Most of my playlists are metadata based, mostly to do with star ratings, Id have to find a way to translate all that to a massive download to another device type. It's too much of a hassle, to change off a device that to be honest works pretty well for me anyway.

    1. Re:The secret with the iPod was not DRM... by wierd_w · · Score: 3, Informative

      MP3s have had metadata since the 90s, when the ID3 tag was introduced.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...

      All a knockoff player needs is a file system checksum initiated rescan+index routine to probe for new ID3 tags after the filesystem changes and the USB connection is removed.

      Walks the whole filesystem, checks each MP3 file it finds for the ID3 tag, references it against a small internal index file to see if it has already been catalogued, then adds/remove entries as needed.

      When the user wants to "browse by genre", it just queries this catalogue, and fetches file handles.

      There is *A LOT* of data you can put into an ID3 tag, including whole jpegs of the album cover!

      This whole shitfest has been solved for a long, LONG time.

  4. Re:This is typical of the "Jobs era" Apple by lgw · · Score: 3, Informative

    You do realize a playlist is just a file, right? And they can be auto-generated based on whatever - directory structure, tags, etc? Whatever algorithm the player has to organize sings into playlists will work just fine with playlist files too.

    --
    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  5. Re:This is typical of the "Jobs era" Apple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    You are an idiot in search of a problem.

  6. Re:This is typical of the "Jobs era" Apple by jo_ham · · Score: 2, Informative

    You didn't see the really obvious checkbox that says "keep my iTunes media folder organised" and unchecked it?

    Maybe the software was too "bloated and buggy" for you to open the options menu.

    It's hilarious how much misinformation gets passed off as fact when it comes to talking about Apple stuff in order to bash something you don't like.

  7. Re: This is typical of the "Jobs era" Apple by jo_ham · · Score: 2, Informative

    Right, but that's not what the OP was talking about - the argument was that the iPod was inferior because you couldn't organise your music manually (even though you actually can), and that "files in in a folder" was superior to "letting the iPod handle where the files are and using a database/m3u style method" to address and play them was somehow inferior because Apple.

    What you are describing with m3u files *is exactly how the iPod works*. The only difference is that the iPod also copies the music files for you, you don't have to drag them onto the iPod yourself (although you absolutely can manage them on your hard drive yourself, despite what people on slashdot will try to tell you).