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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."
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.
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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.
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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
If auto-synch is left on, of course it erases the entire library and replaces it with your iTunes library.
Could you explain the logic of this to me? Using phrases like "of course" seems erroneous to me. If I was developing an application and all I had in mind was the end user, I would handle a sync just like I would handle any other sync: merge the two things you're syncing. When you sync your phone with your computer, does it delete everything and add only new content? No. It 'syncs' which should me a node A gets info from node B and vice versa. No deleting.
The iPod sync doesn't work that way. The library on the iPod is a mirror of the one on the computer. The computer is the master device, and if you make changes to the library on the iPod, they will not be kept unless they are also made on the master library.
When the iPod is synced, the master library is what is used to determine what is on there - it's purely a mirror of the computer, not a two way sync/merge. After the release of the iPhone (and other touchscreen iDevices) the option to consolidate tracks you had downloaded elsewhere was added as part of the sync process, but in the early days when it was designed to be used with a single master library when in full auto mode, it did not do this - it simply told you that it would delete the tracks if you selected "yes, delete the tracks and sync".
Where this would trip people up is if they would load music onto their iPod manually (manual control was always an option) on one computer, then later connected it up to a computer that had automatic sync set up (iTunes warns you if it will delete files, but who reads dialog boxes, eh?), and thus any changes made to the iPod are then lost.
Adding those "third party" tracks to iTunes and syncing them to the iPod worked as it always did, or if you wanted to run with multiple different iTunes libraries you just turned off the automatic sync and just manually controlled what iTunes would copy to your iPod.
Of course, that doesn't make for very click-baity headlines or nonsense lawsuits.
No, it's what happens if you leave the sync settings on auto and ignore the "there are files on this device that are not in your library, these will be deleted? Continue? [Cancel Sync] [Continue Sync]" dialog box.
Set the iPod to manual (or don't factory reset it without a backup) and the click bait goes away.
This entire thing boiled down to "I factory reset something and didn't have a backup. Wah! Apple deleted my stuff!"
What would you say to someone who formatted their device without a backup, expecting everything to still be on it afterwards?
What it appears to boil down to is this:
1) User has an iOS device
2) User syncs some stuff from iTunes to that device
3) User uses a third party system, such as that run by Real, to sync some stuff from the Real media manager to the iOS device
4) Device needs to be wiped and reset
5) iTunes wipes the device and restores from backup, which doesn't include music (or a bunch of other things).
6) iTunes then restores the music its settings indicate was previously synced to the device
7) User gets all up in arms when they realize that iTunes didn't magically restore the music residing in the Real media manager (which may not even exist on the host anymore.
Basically, this isn't an issue regarding your music, it's an issue regarding iTunes and what iOS lets you back up off your device. Thing is, iOS actually provides the functionality to copy the entire contents of the iTunes Media folder on the device via USB, so the Real Media manager could easily do this, and then restore the backups after the device is wiped and refreshed.
Added to this, Apple's wording is actually quite clear as to what gets backed up and how. I don't see anything malicious going on here; just a lack of planning on the part of third parties to fully implement their alternative media manager, complete with backups, or the end user's failure to appreciate that they haven't backed up music that doesn't go through iTunes or iCloud.
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.
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.
you did read that this went to court and apple admitted it did it "to protect people"
Of the tens of thousands of songs I have in iTunes and have had on iPods not as single one was legally purchased from iTunes or any other store, and I've never experienced a single deletion. I have no idea where people are getting this idea.
"... 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...