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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.
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.
RealPlayer - Talk about a ...BUFFERING... wasted oppor ...BUFFERING... tunity ...BUFFERING...
#DeleteChrome
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.
are belong to us.
"Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
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*
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.
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.
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.