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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.
"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
"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
>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?
People were legally format shifting before the iDevices existed, so yes, those things did exist.
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
There were legal mp3 sites like emusic from the late 90s. Not to mention it being legal to rip cds you own for your own personal use. And the thousands of bands which purposely posted songs in mp3 format for free as a form of advertising.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
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.
I'm me willing to bet number 2 was true, but they screwed it up and rather than admit that they're trying to freeload off of iTunes and the iPod, they're blaming them for not sharing.
Despite the fact that RealNetworks had years to get into the game and establish a real actual standard. Sorry RN, you snooze, you fucking lose.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Link to the Verge's coverage of this story... http://www.theverge.com/2014/1...
Except that Apple isn't the owner nor are they acting on behalf of the owner -- they are depriving you of your property on the sole basis that they want to hurt you because you used a competitors service. I fail to see why this should be a mere class action suit and not a criminal proceeding. This should qualify as property destruction and theft.
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.
I miss MyMP3.com. It was the best service for sharing MY songs from MY cd's across all MY computers. Fuck the major record labels.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
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.
And nobody ever had friends who were in an amateur band that used to play at the local pub and sell recordings for beer money. No, never met anyone like that. *eyeroll*
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
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?
You realize that DRM came after the MP3 format, right? And, in fact, that DRM was basically a direct response to people making and sharing MP3 files over services like Napster? I have a small library of fantastic 56kbps quality MP3 files because I sat there and loaded each CD into my computer, played it back and recorded the audio going out, then chopped up that giant audio track into the individual songs. Eventually I found a tool that wouldn't involve me sitting there until the CD finished playing.
So, if I loaded all of those MP3s that I made myself onto my iPod, you're saying that it's ok for Apple to delete them?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
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.
Not to mention that iTunes itself provides this feature. "Rip. Mix. Burn," anyone? This whole story sounds like ambulance-chaser bullshit.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
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 vast majority of the music in my iTunes library (~25 GB) is from ripped CD's and I've never had broken links to songs, but I do have iTunes organize my collection so that might why you were having problems.
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; }
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?
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.
Or any Apple products.
How exactly did you get that missing music onto your old iPod in the first place? I'm sure the newer iOS-based stuff is different, but classic iPods kept the master copy of music on your computer and had no other way to put music on the iPod except via iTunes sync. So you would never actually "move" the music when upgrading, you would just add the new iPod in iTunes and sync with it. Not having used iTunes with two iPods before, I suppose it's possible that you could load a different set of playlists to each one, which would explain your problem.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
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?
They should have gone with option 1, just left the non-working files on the device. As you said, there had been third party software that could access the files, and presumably RealMedia, or whoever sold the tracks in the first place, would still have their media manager that would be able to play the files. If the user was technically savvy enough to use a secondary store + sync software it can be presumed that they could use other software to surgically remove the files instead of clobbering the whole FS.
Instead Apple seems, and it seems to be that this case is to shed light on if it was deliberate, to have forced the choice number 2 on people, forcing them to lose data. If that's the case, when taken to an admitted extreme, it is no different than if MS formatted your computers hard drive on a reboot because you used a word processor that could output .doc files causing you to lose all of your data. Taken to a lesser extreme, it would be like MS releasing a "patch" to Windows that searched the hard drive and deleted all .doc files that had not been created by word... and called it "protecting the user from possible malicious files", I can guarantee there would have been a huge outcry over that.
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
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.
Let's be serious here. You say "they are depriving you". That's not the case. What is correct is "some lawyer claims that some time about ten years ago, Apple deprived you, but if you read what he claims, it doesn't actually make any sense, except if you assume that he is a lawyer who would twist anything that Apple ever might have said to make them look guilty and claim damages".
So, if I loaded all of those MP3s that I made myself onto my iPod, you're saying that it's ok for Apple to delete them?
You wouldn't load them onto the iPod. You would import them into iTunes, and iTunes makes sure that the music you told it to be put onto the iPod will be put onto the iPod, and nothing else. And if you import all your .mp3s into iTunes, they are absolutely safe there.
That's how iTunes and iPod have always worked: In iTunes, you set up what music you want on your iPod, and iTunes puts it there. Take any music you want, add it to iTunes, and it's fine.
And unapologetically. All Glory to the Appletoad.
Suppose you buy an expensive watch from a guy operating from the back of a van. We can assume that the goods being sold are stolen and the transaction is illegal and that the buyer may have to return the stolen property. That's what's happening here, the illegal property (songs) is being destroyed.
It could be, but in the reverse direction: Apple suing Real. Apple designed the proprietary DRM, and it's theirs (itunes, ipod, drm). What gives Real the right to sell music on Apple's platform? It's like you open a retail store in a mall, and a jealous competitor opens a mini-stall inside your store and then sues you when you toss him and his merchandise out of your store.
If multiple vendors want to sell music using the same platform, they need to create a standard spec and software, instead of leeching off other people's work.
"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?"
Do you realize how inane your argument here is? The answer to your question there is simply "yes". If they wanted to be customer friendly, pop up a warning message that files were detected that were now garbage and prompt for a deletion.
OK, that's not an unreasonable option. Apple could have chosen to do that, and that might have avoided this issue. But it seems likely to me that when Apple wrote the iPod OS (not to be confused with iOS) and the iTunes synchronization mechanism, they didn't even consider the possibility that someone would manage to put songs on there that tricked the iPod into thinking they were FairPlay DRMed files, and thus it would have been a considerable extra effort for them to put such a notification in place. But even without it, it's not like any actual data would have been lost—files synchronized to an iPod would still exist in the music library. Unless they were using unsupported third-party software in the first place, in which you should be blaming the third-party software for doing things that are explicitly not supported. So once the files are deleted off the iPod...they're still on your computer where you downloaded them to originally.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
The last few releases of OS X can read from NTFS volumes just fine. Try again.
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?
Not necessarily. There are multiple other syncing software packages that you can use instead of iTunes to put and maintain the music on your iPod.
Two examples found immediately with a quick google search:
How to Put Music on Your iPhone Without Using iTunes
Hereâ(TM)s Five Alternatives to iTunes 10 for Easily Managing Your iPod
There are multiple alternative desktop apps you can use to synch music to your iPod. I posted a few just above this thread.
iTunes is optional. Apple might not like it, but that's the deal.
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.
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
"... 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...
I don't know if this extends to files without DRM, and it sounds like it does not, but Apple is admitting that they deleted files purchased from Real, at least:
http://www.computerworld.com/a...
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
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?
They should have gone with option 1, just left the non-working files on the device.
So they would have been sued for wasting space on iPods instead.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Never touch the stuff myself. The boys at Redmond almost make Apple look good.