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Apple Accused of Deleting Songs From iPods Without Users' Knowledge
SternisheFan writes with this excerpt from a story at AppleInsider that says "During in-court proceedings of Apple's iPod/iTunes antitrust lawsuit on Wednesday, plaintiffs' lawyers claimed Apple surreptitiously deleted songs not purchased through the iTunes Music Store from users' iPods. Attorney Patrick Coughlin, representing a class of individuals and businesses, said Apple intentionally wiped songs downloaded from competing services when users performed a sync with their iTunes library, reports The Wall Street Journal. As explained by the publication, users attempting to sync an iPod with an iTunes library containing music from a rival service, such as RealNetworks, would see an ambiguous error message without prompting them to perform a factory reset. After restoring the device, users would find all non-iTunes music had disappeared. ... It is unclear if iTunes or iPod encountered a legitimate problem, though Coughlin seems to be intimating Apple manufactured the error message as part of a supposed gambit to stop customers from using their iPod to play back music from stores other than iTunes. For its part, Apple said the system was a safety measure installed to protect users."
THAT is why many people avoid Apple like the plague. They've lost their lead, had their fun and are now fighting fowl.
"You didn't buy it from us, you must have stolen it."
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I have been making backups of my iTunes library for years because a long time ago I noticed that a large number of my songs had just gone missing. I never heard anything about it so thought it was just something I had done wrong.
I have been trying to find a decent read on this topic, but it looks like someone linked appleinsider (a site I read, but take with a grain of salt).
Is this case of:
1) Files that had DRM stripped out of them got onto the iPod, and it forced a reset
2) Some other "person" (realnetworks) had a baked version of apple's DRM on it
If so, I got no problem with them forcing a reset.
If this is a case of what it's being made to sound to be, that actual non-DRM, legally purchased files got burnt out? I don't believe said things existed at the time, did they?
"Your honor, it is true that we deleted the songs, but one of them was from Justin Bieber, we thought that the public good..."
- "Why didn't you tell us earlier? Case Dismissed."
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Having not read the article, this sounds more like the age-old behaviour of auto-synch.
If auto-synch is left on, of course it erases the entire library and replaces it with your iTunes library. If the non-iTunes purchased songs were loaded onto the iPod from another source, then of course they don't get re-added until you go and add them again from the other source. People have been aware of this at least since my friend and I would load songs onto eachother's 3rd gen ipod with dock connector back in highschool.
From what I can tell, what's being claimed isn't that Apple is specifically wiping the files, but rather that: 1) users are told to factory-reset their device; and 2) this wipes all files; except that 3) after factory reset, iTunes restores the iTunes-purchased files from Apple.
#2 and #3 don't seem particularly nefarious on their own. You'd expect a factory reset to wipe the device, and you'd expect a cloud service like iTunes to support restoring your purchases from (and only from) that service. So what it seems to boil down to is: was situation #1 popping up nefariously, i.e. Apple is purposely triggering an unnecessary "please factory reset your device" request even when there is nothing wrong with the device and no need to factory-reset it? And furthermore, that Apple is doing this based on detecting competitors' services on the device? That seems... surprisingly blatant if true.
Another possibility, which Apple seems to be hinting at, is that some kind of "tamper-detection" DRM is setting off reset-your-device false positives.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
So, "Factory Reset" isn't supposed to remove things? Or are we to beleive that these iPods came from the factory with their individual users songs?
I for one want to see more companies get a smack-down for anti-competitive practices... I'm sure it'll happen sometime after our government stops taking in "campaign contributions" from corporations.
"We have to protect our users from not giving their money to us!"
This shouldn't surprise you. ITunes, especially on Windows, was a nightmare to manage in parallel with any other music software. Odds are this was just a happy accident that AAPL just didn't do anything to fix.
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
Were the deleted songs DRM'ed by RealNetworks? (these guys still existed?)
I'm pretty sure that regular MP3 files were not deleted, so it's not really a case of "not bought here", remember that Apple was under a lot of legal obligations by the music labels regarding FairPlay DRM at the time.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
This is silly...
The entire point of the iPod and iPhones encrypted file system is designed to prevent you from using anything but iTunes. It's a joke to claim it's for "Security" Security? On my iPod? Really? lol!
knowledge. Must be because they are repentant for deleting users' music earlier.
"Apple said the system was a safety measure installed to protect users."
... spending money on those icky non-apple products.
Protect users from
DONT TREAD ON ME MOÎΩN ÎABÃ
Kind of funny how most of the articles bury (if they even mention it at all) Real (buffering) Network's connection. To put everything in context, The iPod could play unprotected mp3s, aacs, and wavs. They could also play FairPlay DRM files purchased through the iTunes store. Real (buffering) Networks wanted to sell music that could play on iPods but they also wanted their DRM.
Fuck you DRM, and fuck you Real (buffering) Networks. Good riddance to both of you.
Copyright (c) 1990 - 2014 Dice. All rights reserved. Use of this comment is subject to certain Terms and Conditions.
Songs I bought didn't survive an iTunes ' upgrade'. So Apple removes content from iTunes and from your account " magically". I suspect they stopped paying an artist and sold copies anyway. Magic erased evidence on iTunes for Apple which propogated down to the client accounts!
BUT...to get my songs back off backup I paid a service fee of $122.00 to fire up an antiquated hard drive and copy...priceless
Earlier this year I upgraded my iPod. Of course, in order to move the music from one to the other I had to sync with my iTunes library. Everything seemed to go smoothly and I was happy. Then, a few weeks later, I went to play some music that I used to have on my iPod, and it wasn't there. I have since noticed that quite a bit of my music has gone missing. My daughter said the same thing happened to her when she upgraded her iPod last year. I just chalked it up to buggy programming and that was that.
Now I read this story and I'm wondering if that is why my music is missing. Is it because those were songs that I ripped from CDs. Yet, iTunes did not get rid of ALL such music, that I know for certain. I still have the old library backed up, so I'm going to take a closer look at this mess.
Proverbs 21:19
That is what I read too. However, way back when I was stupid enough to buy an iPod (4th gen, IIRC), it simply 'synced' one way, deleting everything not put on there by iTunes without so much as a notification. I always figured this was normal behaviour from Apple so I simply never used iTunes (and soon after got a better mp3 player from a different vendor). Interesting to see this pop up now as an issue.
That's what happens when you reliquish control of your digital life for the sake of the superficial convenience of not having to maintain your own hardware and perform your own backups: when the third party you entrust your data to decides you can't have it anymore, all you can do is bitch and moan and ask politely to get back what's rightfully yours. But *you* don't decide: your comfortable and convenient digital jailer does.
At the end of the day, Apple customers only have themselves to blame for what Apple does to them. And the same goes for Google, Microsoft and all the others, when they decide to shaft their own userbase without warning.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Only 3 of my albums were bought on iTune, yet i've *never* had anything deleted in the 10 or so years I've used ipods and iphones.
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
It always appeared to me that "synch" in the case of an ipod and itunes isn't really a synch, it's a dump (overwrite) from itunes to the ipod. I never assumed that anything I had on the ipod that was not in my itunes account would exist after a "synch". I don't think this is diabolical, just the way the itunes/ipod interface works. After all, the paradigm assumes that the only information on the ipod is from itunes.
Now that I think about it, ipods that have a camera would have to truly synch in some fashion, at least for photos. But for music? If you're putting non-itunes music on an ipod, you have to (in my opinion) assume issues like TFA describes. If you don't like this, choose another device, or learn to work around the issue. One possible workaround is to get in the habit of re-downloading your non-itunes music after every itunes sync.
Most phones will do what the ipod does, and non-Apple phones even have removable storage (micro-SD) up to 128 Gbyte these days. I could argue that ipods are redundant.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
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That is what I read too. However, way back when I was stupid enough to buy an iPod (4th gen, IIRC), it simply 'synced' one way, deleting everything not put on there by iTunes without so much as a notification. I always figured this was normal behaviour from Apple so I simply never used iTunes (and soon after got a better mp3 player from a different vendor). Interesting to see this pop up now as an issue.
Not true.
A sync that involved deleting anything on the iPod that wouldn't stay after the sync was always accompanied by a warning message.
Whether you read or understood this message is entirely an exercise in the IQ of the user.
That is THE whole IDEA behind the DRM crap... YOU don't OWN anything, you own the right to use it UNTIL the owner reclaims that right.h
Just saying.
Umm, whose iPods? You're just renting them.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The walled garden is incredibly secure until somebody shits over the fence.
Apple has exhibited this behavior for a long time now using iTunes "limitations" as a way to promote anti-competitive practices and force consumers to use only Apple Store music.
iTunes has had an issue whereby it frequently looses the location of locally stored non-Apple music, breaking the link in iTunes, making it not only unplayable, but on Syncing (see above article), removes all those broken links from your device. There is a way to re-link your files as a "feature" but you have to do it one song at a time, and iTunes would regularly forget the location of several hundred at a time making it practically useless.
The issue has been around for like a decade now. At first people complained loudly at Apple, but it fell on deaf ears, was never addressed, and people soon figured out that because it really wasn't in Apples best interest (i.e. it makes it easier to NOT use Apple songs), they simply ignored it. Then an enterprising group of people developed an open source Java application, that would re-link all your broken links for you. However what would then happen over the next 4 or 5 years, is that Apple would release a new version of iTunes, that would just happen to break the 3rd party software (intentionally? Who knows?). Then the developers would update the Java program to work again, Apple would break it again, fix, break, etc... Until finally they gave up as it took too much effort to maintain the thing.
It is this sort of unscrupulous counter-consumer BS why I moved to Android and Samsung. I have little doubt that Apple knew exactly what was happening, and was fully aware of what would happen, and doesn't care. They will either throw lawyers at it until it goes away, or simply pay off some puny (in relative terms) settlement, and continue acting in their fiscal best interest rather than the best interests of their consumers satisfaction.
Likely the error message just like the fix one broken link at a time, is simply a measure so that if it ever goes to court they can say, "see we acted in good faith" should it ever come to legal proceedings.
They had to delete those tracks to make room for the new U2 album I didn't want...
The only thing I can figure is that Apple's throwing an error when the iTunes_Control library on the device doesn't match what the sync DB managed by iTunes says should be there. This indicates data corruption, whether it be by gremlins, failed SSD write, or RealNetworks only partially implementing the (closed) sync specification. Since Apple doesn't throw this error when iCloud updates the iTunes_Control library, this means that there exists a way to sync from multiple sources and still not get the error -- which points to a problem with how the third party is doing it. If they want to be able to use the device without getting these errors at all, just create a Real_Control directory and use a RealPod app to play its contents. For pure iPods with no App capabilities, this isn't going to work, and they'll need to add their tracks via iTunes, or fully implement the closed sync specs.
Those closed specs are the one part of Real et al's argument that makes sense -- if Apple is using such a mechanism, it would make sense to make those specs open so that anyone can write software to communicate with the iOS iTunes_Control library. But there's nothing saying they have to.
x.
Circumcision is child abuse.
For its part, Apple said the system was a safety measure installed to protect users.
Yes. Music files can be very dangerous. Many injuries and deaths have been reported...
(Or am I to assume a different meaning from the words "safety" and "protect"?)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
"Itunes ain't done 'till RealPlay won't run..."
A real bitch to be a monopoly, ain't it?
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
by safely protecting consumers from purchasing songs for less money elsewhere
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Not just for a idiotic representation of deletion (resetting your device requires a resync, wow!) But note the "between 2006 and 2009" let's see how many morons here thinks it just happened to them yesterday.
So y'all are seriously backing Real Networks on this? How quickly have you forgotten.
I'd like to play a tune that expresses my frustration at Apple.....hey, where'd it go?
Table-ized A.I.
Apple is evil, and google is making its way to being the other side of the same coin.
...from competitors?
Wow. You spent all that time explaining how iOS devices sync with iTunes when the lawsuit is referring to a time period before iTunes existed.
Umm...no, sorry, you lose. iTunes existed for years before the first iPod was ever sold.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
First of all, what lead has Apple lost that it ever really had? They're set to cross the $1 trillion market cap barrier—for the first time of any company ever—in the not-too-distant future, selling iPhones and Macs faster than ever before, and iPads only very slightly slower than their peak.
Now, if you were paying any attention whatsoever, instead of just writing a knee-jerk Apple-hate comment, you'd know that this was in reference to acts that allegedly occurred many years ago, before the iPhone was even released. That's why it's talking about iPods, y'see?
Furthermore, what actually happened is that a) people had purchased music from stores other than the iTunes Music Store, which had DRM on them that Apple didn't support, and/or b) people had put songs from RealNetworks on their iPods, who had somehow managed to exploit some holes in the FairPlay DRM to trick the iPods into allowing them on there while still maintaining their DRM-ness...and Apple figured out what they had done, fixed the bugs in their code that allowed RealNetworks to get around the fact that they never licensed FairPlay, and removed the songs with bogus FairPlay from people's devices, because they would no longer work.
So...no. This is not Apple getting upset that it's not the top dog (in some way) and lashing out in immature ways. This is other people getting upset that Apple was the top dog (in some ways) and lashing out in immature ways.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Nothing, I repeat nothing on my iPod has been purchased from any "store"...
Yes, I'm one of those nuts who still rips cd's to mp3 and puts them on my devices.
Relatives ask why it is so hard for them to share music between their devices... LOL.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Typo. That should have been before the first iOS devices ever existed.
The problem in this case is that Real is trying to get their reverse engineered version of Apple's FairPlay DRM to work. The reason their music files can't be added through iTunes is because iTunes closed the loopholes that Real used in order to essentially clone the functionality of Apple's DRM-scheme. If the music files in question were DRM-free, this issue wouldn't exist. However, because they sold a bunch of music and Apple didn't want to use Real's DRM scheme, Real tried to reverse engineer FairPlay, which worked for a while until Apple fixed the loopholes and suddenly Real was left back at square one, trying to sell DRM-encumbered music that couldn't be played on most devices.
Real is just trying to sue to get some money because they're just a slowly dying company at this point. They've just slowly been bleeding money and eventually will end up declaring bankruptcy or selling their brand name, though I'm not really sure whey anyone would want it.
Resurrected Steve Jobs vs. The angry pigeon horde. This Easter weekend only!!! At the Thunderdome!! Free admission for kids under 11!! Free monster truck show to follow!! Thunderdome!!
Real is just trying to sue to get some money because they're just a slowly dying company at this point. They've just slowly been bleeding money and eventually will end up declaring bankruptcy or selling their brand name, though I'm not really sure whey anyone would want it.
In electronics, brand names like RCA and Zenith have certainly been sold around. After all, they used to be well-known and well-respected names and... oh wait, never mind, this is Real we're talking about.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Attorney Patrick Coughlin, representing a class of individuals and businesses, said Apple intentionally wiped songs downloaded from competing services when users performed a sync with their iTunes library, reports The Wall Street Journal.
I've got over 3,000 songs in my iTunes library spread out over my iPad, iPod and iPhone. (And I rsync them to my Android devices.) Not a single one of them has been purchased from Apple. Not a single one of them has been deleted. TFA is really light on content but I'd almost guarantee that the "affected users" were trying to use 3rd party software to sync the music to their iDevices and the 3rd party software fucked up the music catalog file.
I have literally NO sympathy for complainers that purchase products even knowing ahead of time that they lock you into monoculture that is arbitrarily and completely controlled by a company with a long history of abusing their own customers (e.g. Apple, Microsoft, Sony).
Are they simply meeting the definition of insanity (same action different result) or do they just have such a ridiculously overinflated ego that they seriously expect to be treated better than all the other previously abused customers?
and removed the songs with bogus FairPlay from people's devices, because they would no longer work.
See that's the thing, it's MY filesystem on MY device.
If the files exploited a hole in the DRM, then the DRM was patched and the files no longer work... fine, the files don't work, but you can't delete my files on my device .
Face it, Apple screwed the pooch and got called out on it. Hopefully they get a sharp smack in the nose with a newspaper, learn from the past and don't do stupid shit like this again, and everyone can move on.
Okaaaay...but, see, first of all, even by the time of the events in the lawsuit, pretty much everyone already knew, if you want to have total control over your device and manage every single configuration and file copy by hand...you don't buy an iPod.
Second of all, what the hell were you going to do with those songs once Apple fixed the bugs? Without the buggy code, the bootleg implementation of FairPlay just wouldn't work. The files wouldn't play, and the way they were put on the iPod would mean that there would be literally no other purpose to having them on there. I don't know if you know how syncing to iPods worked in the pre-iOS era, but while there was a "disk mode" that would allow you to mount the iPod's hard drive as a simple HFS+ filesystem (or, presumably, FAT on Windows? not sure of the details on that end) on your computer, it would not allow you to directly access the music on the iPod, either to add it, copy it off, or delete it.
So basically, once the bugs were fixed, these files were nothing more than junk data, in a section of the iPod that there was literally no other way for you to get rid of them unless you were using one of a few different pieces of third-party software—obviously not supported or assumed to be the case by Apple—so what should they have done? Just let those pieces of random garbage data take up space on the iPod for the rest of its life? Forced you to erase the whole thing just to get rid of them?
Based on your tone, I'm pretty sure your answer to all this would be along the lines of, "They should have just left it all up to me in the first place," but that ship had sailed long ago. And I think that really just brings us back full circle, to "yeah, but if you wanted that, you'd know perfectly well not to buy an Apple device."
There is—demonstrably—room in the market for devices with multiple competing philosophies. At the time, there were a number of devices made by various other companies that would have allowed you to manage your music by hand. Demanding that every single company adhere to your personal philosophy, provided they are not infringing any actual rights or breaking any laws, is not a reasonable position to take.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
I just read that it's possible to transfer & play your I-tunes files on other devices, like an android phone. With an itunes player, I don't feel I own something if music files can be deleted without my permission. We have one of these players, but I've always been wary of it.
There are plenty of other players/dev boards that can read in music from something like a micro-SD card and play music without all the DRM hassles. There are plenty of open-source projects out there that use inexpensive boards, like the raspberry PI, or the STM32F4 board, running bare-metal, linux, or Free-RTOS..
Hey.. I actually remember back when Real was the best thing to happen to online audio! RealAudio player back in the day beat out Windows Media, Quicktime, and whatever else was available. They made their player fully unencumbered and free, and charged for the streaming software and the encoding software.
Then they created their own music locker, streaming video service, bundleware agreements, etc. and the rest is history.
I even remember using their streaming radio back in the day; they had some good features (Rolling Stones 500 sponsored by Chrysler comes to mind). But by that point they were already past their best before date.
Not true.
I remember working with my cousins ipod connecting it to my computer when he was out visiting. ITunes claimed it needed to sync and made no claim of any sort that it would delete anything. It then proceeded to delete everything off the ipod. Fortunately I'm quite good with computers and was able to mount the thing as a flash drive and run some file recovery software to retrieve a good bit of his music, since he was on a road trip and didn't have his home music library with him to re-sync it.
And unapologetically. All Glory to the Appletoad.
The last few releases of OS X can read from NTFS volumes just fine. Try again.
comming from the company that colluded wit certain publishers to raise ebook prices and tried to eliminate competition in that market!
I think you'll need to plead more than typo to get out of this one... The entire point of the lawsuit is to do with the iTunes sync protocol and how DB errors on the device are handled. The only bit of what I stated that is post-suit is the iCloud bit, which is why I only included it in the part about getting up in arms, and not the part regarding the problem itself.
Real will have to prove that Apple intentionally threw up the error when they detected Real attempting to manipulate FairPlay/iTunes Sync -- which doesn't look like what happened at all. What it looks like is that after Apple locked Real out of syncing via iTunes itself, Real didn't implement the sync protocol correctly, resulting in DB checksum mismatches. As a result, the integrity checking on the iPod flagged an error and triggered a reset -- which only restored iTunes-based audio because that's all it knew about.
bad form?
t yet.
Circumcision is child abuse.
The only reason this was even an issue was because Real wanted to use their own DRM, so they had to hack their way onto the iPod. Normal files, no matter where or how you got them, would sync and stay synched without any problems.
Its just lucky that Apple fans like to bend over and take it up the arse.
Real music installs its own music service between iTunes and the iPod, falsify identifying itself as FairPlay and hacking Apples DRM. When Apple pushed out an update to remove "Harmony", it may have accidentally deleted some third party tunes. link
And just to hammer the point home, it's likely that the need for a factory reset, which the lawsuit wants us to believe was engineered by Apple, was a response to corrupt data on the iPod. Such as, say, a botched attempt to reverse engineer FairPlay by RealNetworks.
Why they aren't suing RealNetworks for crashing their iPods is beyond me.
Great conspiracy theory, only problem is that Real isn't part of this.
"... Coughlin explained the procedure as to which Apple employed to remove songs from users’ iPods. The vaguely duplicitous act was executed by Apple when iPod users would attempt to sync their iPod with iTunes after downloading music from rival music services. The user would be instructed by an error message instructing it to restore the iPod to its factory setting. Once the user synced their iPod with iTunes after restoring their iPod to its factory settings, the non-Apple music files music would gone.
Apple defends its action and claims it was just worried its users were at the hands of hackers. Apple’s security director Augustin Farrugia informed the court that hackers “DVD John” and “Requiem” were potential threats to users and thus removed non-Apple music files from iPods. Farrugia reasons Apple did not inform users of the deletion because the company does not want to “confuse users” with “too much information.” ....
http://www.digitaltrends.com/m...
Never touch the stuff myself. The boys at Redmond almost make Apple look good.