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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.

41 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 UnknowingFool · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Yes it reminds me of the Palm Pre iTunes sync fiasco. Now Palm could have (1) written their own sync software and music library (2) read Apple's iTunes XML library or (3) trick iTunes into thinking that a Palm was an iPod. Palm chose #3. Then when Apple enforced the USB device recognition parameters to lock them out, Palm complained to the USB Implementers Forum but the USB IF scolded Palm instead for breaking rules on how USB devices should identify themselves.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    3. 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.

    4. Re:Old issue by jrumney · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    5. Re:Old issue by Anubis+IV · · Score: 2

      Lock-in is a normal part of business. Stating it as fact as something that was happening here does not mean that I understand why people are suing a company over it. And I don't. Understand, that is. Apple simply patched a hole that had a demonstrated exploit, and there were numerous ways to get music onto an iPod that didn't involve buying music from Apple. These people would have a better case for suing RealNetworks for false advertising, since Real was claiming to have a way to put their music onto an iPod, which was a promise they couldn't deliver in the long-term.

    6. 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.

    7. Re:Old issue by jrumney · · Score: 2

      Adding DRM to a file is not circumventing the DRM. If anything, it was Real Network's DRM that was being circumvented by the conversion.

    8. Re:Old issue by Firethorn · · Score: 2

      Lock-in is a normal part of business.

      Perhaps, but anti-trust legislation were specifically passed to limit this.

      --
      I don't read AC A human right
  2. Re:Ridiculous sentence by mythosaz · · Score: 3, Funny

    He's probably still just mad about being forced a copy of a U2 album.

  3. No problem... by Kenja · · Score: 3, Funny

    just check the couch cushions, I'm sure they've got a few hundred million in there amongst the Cheetos and lost tv remotes.

    --

    "Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
  4. RealPlayer? Sigh... by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  5. F RealPlayer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  6. Re:RealPlayer? Sigh... by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 5, Funny

    RealPlayer - Talk about a ...BUFFERING... wasted oppor ...BUFFERING... tunity ...BUFFERING...

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  7. This is typical of the "Jobs era" Apple by willoughby · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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

      Old iPods let you do this. I had one that did, I don't miss it at all.

      For those who think "oh I wish i had a device i can just browse as a hard drive"... well, how do you make playlist with a filesystem? I have 2 thousand files on my iPod, and I'm not even trying hard. Because some are based on last time i played them, dozens of files come and go based on metadata changes every time I sync. You want me to manage that myself? How can I have a file in two playlists, do I have to have two copies on disk? There's no real good way on filesystem only. You have to have some managing software. And at that point, you need to sync between Filesystem image and Managing software image. At that point, I'm willing to drop the Filesystem access for a decent player. I had the second gen iPod.

    2. Re:This is typical of the "Jobs era" Apple by UnknowingFool · · Score: 4, Insightful
      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.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    3. Re: This is typical of the "Jobs era" Apple by Karlt1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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?

    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 lgw · · Score: 2

      Most people have Artist --> Album --> Song. With a database you could navigate by all three and Genre and Composer and so on.

      Obviously, you can do both. There's no reason, none at all, not to keep the actual mp3s in a sensible file tree, and all the relevant meta-data in the mp3s directly (so that you can scan anything copied to the filesystem directly and provide whatever clever interface you desire to them).

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    6. Re:This is typical of the "Jobs era" Apple by UnknowingFool · · Score: 2

      Yes and Apple does not take that away. I seem to remember there was an option to "Let me manage my own music" a long time ago. People that were pissy about it were people who wanted Apple to load it onto an iPod into a clear directory layout that they could access. This means they could easily share music. But with Apple's system you had to load music as files and as music which meant twice the space required.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    7. Re:This is typical of the "Jobs era" Apple by cant_get_a_good_nick · · Score: 2

      yes. i realize there are these things known as files.... :)

      But, do you think about the huge mental model difference between a filesystem (and not mentioning specific limitations per filesystem, say what I can do in FAT) vs what I want a playlist to look like. You may revel in "hey I can map these two different models in my head interchangably" I've done that too, hey I"m a programmer (who's actually written one of these so called "files") but most people don't like to play that way. They just want to listen to music.

      How does this playlist work? Do you hand generate it? Is there one copy of the music file in a sinular location on disk? that makes sense to me... but then now I have a JOIN. I have the same file in multiple lists,, I need to JOIN with a fileID. How are primary keys generated suquentially? At this point I need a program to manage the stuff on disk. Now, I have this model difference between filesystem (I have to balance my nodes, not everything goes into 90s, 80s, i need a well balanced hash, maybe dirs AA1, AA2, ZZ9, etc). So, now I have to use the app, cause my disk is a mess to satisfy constraints of the device. At this point, do I care to look at the disk? It's a balanced hash of files, and the real info is in the playlist. The playlist has metadata and JOINs, can i do all this in my head? Nahhh, just use the app. At this point, you have an iPod without a visible filesystem, and iTunes.

    8. Re:This is typical of the "Jobs era" Apple by gmhowell · · Score: 2

      People with different use cases than you are displaying 'idiocy'?

      Not sure that I've ever seen the Slashdot superiority complex more blatantly stated.

      Can you tell us now how much tablets suck because you can't 'do real work' on them?

      --
      Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
    9. Re:This is typical of the "Jobs era" Apple by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 2, Insightful

      well, how do you make playlist with a filesystem?

      really? that's your question?

      % cd somewhere; find . -print > playlist.txt

      or equiv.

      yeah, that was REAL hard. filesystems suck for audio playback.

      oh wait, NO THEY DON'T.

      --

      --
      "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
    10. Re: This is typical of the "Jobs era" Apple by Mr.+Slippery · · Score: 2

      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"?

      Good lord, they really do let anyone in here nowadays, regardless of technical savvy. Son, have you never looked at an m3u file? It's a list. Of songs, each song being one file path. You give this m3u file to your music software and it plays each one, in either sequential or random order.

      --
      Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
      You cannot wash away blood with blood
    11. Re:This is typical of the "Jobs era" Apple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      You are an idiot in search of a problem.

    12. Re:This is typical of the "Jobs era" Apple by garote · · Score: 2

      Solution: PodWorks
      It's a 1.4MB application you can copy onto your iPod. Plug the iPod into your friend's computer, launch the application, and you can ""share"" music by dragging straight out of your playists, or browsing the on-board database. There's even a "recreate in iTunes" button that will make local copies of your selection and do just that.
      It (PodWorks) hasn't been updated in at least 7 years and it still runs fine!

    13. Re:This is typical of the "Jobs era" Apple by reanjr · · Score: 2

      I can't tell you how much of my purchased music disappeared after switching to iTunes. I had always used Dropbox for my music. But when I switched to iTunes, files would go missing all the time, and because there was absolutely no HDD organization I could never figure out what was missing. Instead I stopped using iTunes and the problem disappeared.

      iTunes is a bloated, buggy, unusable piece of shit. If you don't buy into doing things exactly how Steve tells you to, everything falls apart.

    14. 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.

    15. 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).

    16. Re: This is typical of the "Jobs era" Apple by Karlt1 · · Score: 2

      That's a great solution! Why didn't Apple think of doing what Android does. I'm sure they could have just put a 1ghz+ ARM chip and 1GB of RAM in $399 device back in 2001.

      I'm sure it would have also been very power efficient and fast to read and index the entire contents of an 80GB spinning hard drive with an 80Mhz processor. On top of that, just think how great it would have been trying to create a complicated playlist using the click wheel on an iPod.

      Or were you thinking about using a separate app on your computer to create the playlist, sync the playlist to the MP3 player and then copy the files over using the file system?

      I guess CmdrTaco was right, "less space than a Nomad, no wireless lame". It's no wonder that the ipod was such a failure....

    17. Re:This is typical of the "Jobs era" Apple by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 2

      Playlists don't, and never have, copied files or required sole access to them. All of the common playlist formats are basically just text files with a list of filenames - you can open & edit them in Notepad!

      So they break when somebody moves or renames the files. Wasn't the whole point being able to "manage your files" - which then breaks things?

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
  8. All you song by ziggy_az · · Score: 4, Funny

    are belong to us.

    --
    "Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
  9. Apple did us a favor by Technician · · Score: 3, Interesting

    i for one am glad Apple took this course of action. It made it abundantly clear that DRM is a failed business plan. Between the Mini Disk MO player/recorder with serial copy protection and then iTunes with copy protection, they left a void that quickly became filled with alternatives with much higher compatabiliy. DRM simply meant incompatability to many as the Mini Disk was incompatible with desktop music production. It gave way to simple recordable CD's. DAT tape, competing company, with mandated DRM was knifed in the cradle. In my life I have only seen one DAT tape recorder, but neve any tapes for it. It was pretty much a dead format due to DRM.

    The huge public awareness of DRM and incompatibility was presented to the public with iTunes and it's incompatibility with everything else. DVD player could play MP3 CD's and DVD's. In dash car stereos began to support MP3 CD's and some play MP3's on a thumb drive. A few supported an iPod dock, but none could directy play Apple DRM content which made the public aware of the problem.

    Apple finally had to support non DRM industry compatability to stay alive.

    Thank you Apple for educating the large portion of the public. DRM on music is mostly a thing of the past.

    --
    The truth shall set you free!
    1. Re: Apple did us a favor by Karlt1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Apple finally had to support non DRM industry compatability to stay alive.

      Apple supported DRM free music before any of the other stores sold DRM free music from the major labels.

      Steve Jobs wrote "Thoughts on Music" where he publicly asked the labels to let Apple and all of the other companies sell DRM free music instead of licensing FairPlay (what the industry wanted) months before music stores start selling DRM free music.

  10. Re:The secret with the iPod was not DRM... by ArcadeMan · · Score: 2

    You cannot buy MP3 files today, nor since the iTunes store launched because Apple used AAC from the start.

    And yes, metadata and smartlists are the way to go, I still wonder why some people want to manage their music files manually.

    --
    Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
  11. 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.

  12. Re: The secret with the iPod was not DRM... by ArcadeMan · · Score: 2

    Apple sells AAC files, Amazon sells MP3 files.

    --
    Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
  13. Re:RealPlayer? Sigh... by vivek7006 · · Score: 2

    Interestingly iTunes has become process-hogging bloatware-laden pig. So its the new RealPlayer!

  14. Re:Well, we already have this for music by camg188 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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?

  15. Re:RealPlayer? Sigh... by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 3

    You just described how many of us feel about iTunes today. My iPods are essentially offline now because I don't want Apple software on my PC.