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Apple To Face $350 Million Trial Over iPod DRM
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.
If the plaintiffs succeed, media content purchased online may go the way of CDs and be playable on competing devices.
Oh, yeah! They're going to ban DRM! Suck it, Amazon!
What is the submitter smoking?
RealPlayer - Talk about a wasted opportunity. In the '90s those guys OWNED streaming "Internet Radio" and the nascent business of streaming video. All squandered as their player degraded into a process-hogging bloatware-laden pig that people began uninstalling in disgust.
As much I dislike iTunes lock-in and DRM, RealPlayer are not by any means good guys. They were peddling a competing DRM system. Sod them both to Hades.
Back about the time of the first iMac, Apple also introduced the "G3 (blue & white) Tower". A few months later, when everyone knew that a G4 Mac tower was in the works but hadn't been introduced yet, some aftermarket outfits offered an upgrade kit which allowed you to install a G4 processor in your G3 tower.
Apple released an update (disguised as something I can't remember, a video card update, perhaps) which broke all of these aftermarket G4 upgrade kits.
The behavior described in this court case was just the way Jobs ran things.
Which is all to say, this case makes no sense to me.
This confuses me, you yourself mention the reason for the lawsuit in your own post.
... but also, obviously, because it damaged their ability to lock people in ...
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.
For being the "Land of the free" we sure have alot of people attacking individual freedom.
C'mon now. Please don't try to put music sales from Apple in the same category as political or religious freedom, which is what "land of the free" is about.
This Apple thing, DRM and such, is a business transaction. You are completely free to make a business transaction for equivalent products with different companies. You could even go to a library, borrow a CD and rip the songs you want. How much more free do you want?
Record company policies may have been the reason for Apple to use DRM in the first place, but it wasn't the reason they modified their syncing software every time a competitor managed to make their music compatible with that DRM.