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10-Year-Old iTunes DRM Lawsuit Heading To Trial
itwbennett writes Plaintiffs in the Apple iPod iTunes antitrust litigation complain that Apple married iTunes music with iPod players, and they want $350 million in damages. The lawsuit accuses Apple of violating U.S. and California antitrust law by restricting music purchased on iTunes from being played on devices other than iPods and by not allowing iPods to play music purchased on other digital music services. Late Apple founder Steve Jobs will reportedly appear via a videotaped statement during the trial, scheduled to begin Tuesday morning in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
I bet I'll make out in the tens of cents, maybe even the dollars if I'm lucky.
As was often written on various propaganda posters in USSR: Lenin died but his cause lives on! .
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Late Apple founder Steve Jobs will reportedly appear via a videotaped statement during the trial
What other prophetic videos had Steve prepared just for future legislation purposes?
I have an ipod.. If I am part of this class action settlement, I'll get 10 cents (as someone said earlier). I don;t want the dime; I want to be able to add media to the ipod without going through itunes... Want a class action lawsuit to do some good? Make it so that there are fundamental changes. of course Apple will say that it is impossible to put media on the ipod with out itunes... I know a few jailborken ipods that show otherwise.
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"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
Damn.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Wow. Well, I better get started on my own lawsuits, as I can't install Microsoft Windows on my 68k Mac. Nor can I put diesel in my petrol car. And, heavens forbid, I can't play WMA encoded files on my iPod. And as for not being able to play a compact cassette on an 8-track player; well, Phillips better get a checkbook out and write some big checks, because of the damages I've suffered because of that.
Seriously, this is a case?
If you account in glacial terms.
for illegal file sharing. Because plausible.
Koans and fables for the software engineer
I meant to make a joke with my original posting, but you chose to bleat something about politics... So, here it is...
The naivette is all yours. If Lenin was any better than Stalin, it was not at all obvious. It was he, who presided over campaign of mass-murder known as Red Terror — including killing off of the Russian clergy. And, yes, he not only tolerated, but ordered taking — and executing — of the opponents' hostages, among other steps...
For decades Commy-sympathizers like yourself have been singing a variety of tunes to the effect that "Communism is good, Stalin was bad". No way, no how — every time Communism was attempted in earnest, it resulted in mass-murder followed by decades of miserable existence for survivors robbed of both economic wealth and human rights.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
So Steve Jobs is basically giving a posthumous Amicus brief, which is worth precisely zero when it comes to the actual merits of the case.
The problem for the plaintiffs will be how they define the market if they want to succeed in an anti-trust case. If they define too narrowly or too broad, Apple will win. I also wonder how they get around the contract that Apple has with the copyright holders. After all, Apple was a reseller of their music and if DRM was a condition then they can't get around that.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Prediction: Apple will pay $350 million denominated in Bono screeches.
Do they really have to drag Steve (Jobs) from his grave (even if only by video)?
Maybe he does a nice introduction a la "If you see this video, I'm dead. Thanks for stealing an hour of my dwindling life for it. Not".
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
If you read the suit they are alleging that not playing other music caused the iPod to cost more, not music to cost more, "the software updates caused iPod prices to be higher than they otherwise would have been." I don't see how they can possibly prove that. I'd suspect if anything the song restriction caused iPod prices to be lower.
Oh no, naive idealists kill people all the time.
They just kill them for conflicting with their ideals, rather than for being political nuisances.
FOUNDER? rewrite history much?
What about Steve Wozniak? (and to a lesser extent Ronald Wayne)
Maybe they can select a team of current popular Apple execs to remaster, finish, and re-envision Steve Jobs's recorded statement.
Hey, it worked for Michael Jackson.
The Cult members must be exited about that.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
For the purposes of the trial, Wozniak was not involved with Apple during the start of iTunes. He wouldn't have been called to testify. Second it does not say Jobs was the sole founder.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I'm guessing the video in question will be Jobs holding up both his middle fingers, dropping the mic, and walking off.
The underlying cause of this tolerance of mass-murder — which leads to occasional outbreaks of actual mass-murder — is the collectivist notion, that the glorious Collective ought to trump the cantankerous Individual — for The Greater Good. Once you accept it, there is no stopping...
The US too had a Civil War — 50 years before Russia. There was plenty of killing, some of it unwarranted, but there were no mass-murders. That, in my not so humble opinion, is because we are (or were) an Individualist country.
On contrast, 70 years before our Civil War here, France too had its own — being a Collectivist society, they had an awful lot of mass-executions. The guillotine — invented for easy butchering of animals — was adopted to killing humans instead... Soviet revolutionaries thought of Jacobines fondly, while vowing not to repeat their mistakes (that is, not killing enough enemies).
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
And here's a different naive idealist.
Collectivism is an inevitable consequence of society. Society is an inevitable consequence of humanity. Deal with it.
Yeah, "Socialism" is inevitable — followed by the equally inevitable Communism :-) Karl Marx much?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Perhaps the problem is that the kind of people who can bring about large changes in society tend to be egotistical, ambitious, dictatorial personalities. Those who desire power are often the least likely to use it well. That doesn't mean that such a society is impossible, but merely that the kinds of people who are capable of bringing it about without turning into dictators are so rare that such a person has not yet been born.
> This might be true, but, if you look at the contents of any folder you'll find that all the files in it are unrelated, i.e., several songs from several different albums by several different artists. This is Apple we're talking about, there's no way that some of the obfuscation isn't deliberate.
That's exactly what any decent programmer has always done want fast access from code. You want each folder (branch) to end up with approximately the same number of files. The user might load 600 Beatles songs and nothing else, so you use a hash that is not affected by artist name or anything else that might cause them to be similar. Something like md2.
A number of countries — USSR, North Korea, Cuba — have gone through not only the initial period of mass-murders (which you could explain away by character-flaws of the initial crop of leaders), but through the subsequent decades of economic misery and human rights deprivation too. None of them has anything to show for it — the mass-murders may have ended, but the misery and deprivations continue.
So, no, whatever theory may suggest, "such a society" is, indeed, impossible in practice... And Marxism has been debunked in theory too — as much as anything can be debunked in these imprecise "sciences".
Just how many more times is the humanity to attempt this "worker's paradise" — before we start hanging those wearing Che Guevara T-shirts on lamp-posts?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Unless I'm mistaken, wasn't this also the cause of the eventual death of DRM?
The music industry didn't like Apple's desire to sell every track at the same price (instead preferring to charge higher for more in demand music) - yet found themselves in the uncomfortable position of not actually being able to do that on competing stores thanks to the very DRM (they insisted on all content having) not being compatible with iTunes.
I can't help wondering what would have happened if the same situation had also been played out with video and eBooks...
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
How exactly were consumers compelled to buy iTunes and why couldn't they get the same music elsewhere. Like buying a music CD and uploading the tunes to their portable music playing device.
And, yes, he not only tolerated, but ordered taking — and executing — of the opponents' hostages, among other steps...
wait, so Lenin's opponents had hostages, and Lenin took those hostages and then executed them? That's a weird response...
The underlying cause of this tolerance of mass-murder — which leads to occasional outbreaks of actual mass-murder — is the collectivist notion, that the glorious Collective ought to trump the cantankerous Individual — for The Greater Good. Once you accept it, there is no stopping...
everybody on Slashdot knows that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
don't know about Day One, but when I bought the original iPod Mini on first day of sale, I had no problem importing MP3 files and WAVs into iTunes and the player. I was also able to export playlists as WAVs onto CDs for the car. that seems to void the whole premise of the lawsuit.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Please, this is Apple we are talking about. I recall the first iPod touch was broken down, cost Apple $142 but they sold it for $500. That is a much larger mark up than the 30 cents you listed. That $1 song likely cost them 15 cents to the artist, 25 cents to the labels and 10 cents to BMG. If that.
That's horseshit and you know it. Everyone knows it, only fucktards somehow imagine that a device only costs to manufacture what the components cost.
I guess you're forgetting that for Apple to serve the music people buy, they have to maintain a copy of the song somewhere... I guess you think servers are free, and electricity is free, and bandwidth on the internet is free, and also having to commit to keeping copies of them and make sure they're available in perpetuity is free... also, I guess managing people's accounts is free, and Apple doesn't have to pay the customary percentages for credit card transaction fees on your 89 cent purchases... because Visa and MasterCard don't charge Apple for that... then there's paying all those customer service people... I've barely shown you the tip of the fucking iceberg, you retarded bitch.
I bet you're the same kind of asshole who bitches at restaurants wanting 9.50 for a chef's salad when you know that the lettuce in it only costs 87c, the dressing only costs 18c, the croutons are from a single piece of bread, that's like about a dime or thereabouts... forgetting that there are other costs. The guy who made the salad probably expects a paycheck, the refrigeration to keep all those ingredients fresh, that probably isn't free... oh, and the purchase cost of that giant, industrial walk-in fridge where they keep everything... where THE GODDAMNED FUCK DO YOU THINK THE RESTAURANT GETS THE MONEY TO PAY FOR *THAT*? What about the insurance they have to maintain so when some duchefuck sack of dogshit finds a hair in her salad, and has a stroke because of it, or someone's taking out a sack of trash at the end of the day, tears the bag, and a dishwasher slips and cuts his face open? What about the costs of ADVERTISING, maintaining a fucking business license... it really does go on and on. Tax attorneys... health code compliance, hiring and firing practices compliance, taxes taxes and taxes on fucking taxes... (you've obviously never run a fucking business, have you?)
Even if whatever shit-for-brains supposed "tech writer" who decided the parts cost $142 (which he couldn't possibly have known,) you're forgetting the costs of INVENTING THE FUCKING THING, WRITING AND MAINTAINING THE SOFTWARE BEHIND IT, PAYING THE EXECUTIVES NEEDED TO MANAGE ALL THE AFOREMENTIONED PEOPLE AND STEER THE COMPANY, insurance, utilities, oh, and let's not forget that they still have to make at least as much profit as the average other tech company, or investors will flee..., depriving them of the capital they need to continue OPERATING over time... then there's the cost of innovation, since not every single thing you try will pan out. Some products will be returned. Some will be defective. Some (Newton, anyone?) will just FLOP. Apple has to EAT THE COSTS OF ALL THOSE THINGS... and a metric fuckton more that I can't even think of, and where the motherfucking goddamned fucking fuck do you think the money comes from to cover ALL THAT?!? HUH!?!? ANSWER ME !!!!!!!
Those "oh, the $600 iPad only costs $180 to make" articles are fucking bullshit and if you believe them, (at the risk of sounding abusive,) you're a gullible fucking moron and I have no more time for you or all the other empty-headed fuckfaces who "think" (for want of a better word,) like you!
Have a nice day. Try not to trip over your own lip you slackjawed dolt.
It's hard to fail Apple for not allowing music purchased from other stores to play on the iPod. It'd have required Apple to support third-party DRM (which would cost Apple money), while iirc the original iPod would play mp3, amongst other formats. Can one really demand someone else to play your resticted-play files? Especially when that other party does support various other industry standards already?
Bitten by their own DRM I'd say. Proves again that DRM stands for Digital Restrictions Management - in this case restricting to which devices may play a file. The iPod was not included. The moment they dropped this restriction from their store, the iPod could play their files just fine. Which, of course, is in part what did in DRM on music files. It's too restrictive on the sellers.
The only possibly valid claim I see is Apple not licencing their DRM system to other players.
you've never had the experience of having to port out data from SpecialApp on one system to ThunderCode on another system? dude, you always have to flush it through something, sometimes multiple somethings. this is the history of computing. why is bits that tinkle any different from bits that make payroll?
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Woz? Is that you?
"Late Apple founder Steve Jobs will reportedly appear ..."
Trial includes table rocking and mediums?
I meant to make a joke with my original posting, but you chose to bleat something about politics... So, here it is...
The naivette is all yours. If Lenin was any better than Stalin, it was not at all obvious. It was he, who presided over campaign of mass-murder known as Red Terror —
So why don't you mention the atrocities by tsarist Russia, and that the clergy supported them? E.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_Russian_Empire
10-Year-Old iTunes DRM Lawsuit Heading To Trial
I misread that as "10-Year-Old iTunes DRM Lawyer."
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
They don't have his head in a jar yet?
[...] The US too had a Civil War — 50 years before Russia. There was plenty of killing, some of it unwarranted, but there were no mass-murders. That, in my not so humble opinion, is because we are (or were) an Individualist country. On contrast [sic], 70 years before our Civil War here, France too had its own — being a Collectivist society, they had an awful lot of mass-executions. [...]
The American Civil War was, for all practical purposes, a conventional war between two nation states. The French Revolution was not; it was not even a civil war (unless you count the revolt in Vendée where loyalists attacked republican forces with material support from the United Kingdom). The mass executions of the Reign of Terror were political purges, pure and simple. Meanwhile, your “individualist country” is responsible for the enslavement, internment and mass murder of millions of its own (abducted) citizens on its own (stolen) territory, and the political faction which you seem to support is doing its damned best to continue the tradition, so shut the fuck up.
No. Just because it has happened doesn't at all mean that it must happen.
Collectivism has nothing at all to do with society. It is not the desire of society. It is a tool used by oppressive powers to do terrible things that they wouldn't otherwise be able to do.
I'm glad I've never bought anything "i" or "Apple" or "Mac" or any other overpriced, overhyped piece of crap from that company! "Walled Garden" is just a kinder, gentler way of saying; "stay inside the razor wire you worthless idiots!" And, oh yeah, send us piles of cash!!!
My karma is bad. Don't get too close!!!
Back in the old days (that would be 2000-2004) I was able to load most of my non-iTunes DRMed music onto my iPod with some low-cost cracking program I purchased. Since this was music I had paid for, I believed then (and still do) that it was my personal right to play the music on any device of my choosing. I never shared my music with anyone else. The only music I recall being unable to rescue were the DRMf'ed songs I bought from Walmart's online music store, which probably doesn't exist anymore. It was about ten dollars worth of music. I never made that mistake again. If I couldn't figure out how to crack it, I wouldn't buy it.
Cracking the iTunes DRM was as easy as burning the song I'd just purchased to a writable CD and then copying it back into my iTunes. Early on in the game, I recall having to rename each music track myself, because the copied songs were listed with generic names. So I guess I'm just wondering why any of this was ever a problem for anyone. I'm really not that smart.