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.

Comments

RealPlayer? Sigh...

[CohibaVancouver]

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.

This is typical of the "Jobs era" Apple

[willoughby]

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.

Re:This is typical of the "Jobs era" Apple

[UnknowingFool]

Ever notice that people with thousands of songs find navigating by file incredibly inefficient. Seriously with this kind of navigation you are limited to a single hierarchy. Most people have Artist --> Album --> Song. With a database you could navigate by all three and Genre and Composer and so on.

Why on earth would you buy an inferior device for twice the price with no ability to manage its content on your own?!?!?!

Because managing files in a hierarchical system is not what people care about. Seriously with other MP3 players before the iPod you had to do this as there was no other choice. After the iPod, the only people who care about this are control freaks that want every single file in place where they think it should be on the HDD. The only aspect I care about how the files are arranged is which directory I needed to back up to back up my music. Users/Me/My Music is pretty much all I need to know.

Re: This is typical of the "Jobs era" Apple

[Karlt1]

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

So how do I have the same song in multiple playlist when the definition of a playlist on other players were "files in a folder"?

How do I create smart playlist?

Re:Old issue

[jrumney]

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.