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Apple DRM Lawsuit Might Be Dismissed: Plaintiffs Didn't Own Affected iPods

Posted by timothy on from the none-of-your-business dept.

UnknowingFool writes The lawsuit involving Apple and iTunes DRM may be thrown out because the plaintiffs did not own the iPods for which they are suing. The lawsuit covers iPods for the time period between September of 2006 and March of 2009. When Apple checked the serial numbers of the iPods of the plaintiffs, it appears they were not manufactured during this time. One plaintiff did purchase an iPod in 2005 and in 2010 and has withdrawn from the suit. The second plaintiff's iPod was manufactured in July 2009 but claims purchasing another iPod in 2008. Since the two plaintiffs were the only ones in the suit, the case may be dismissed for lack of standing.

7 of 141 comments (clear)

  1. Not unexpected. by pushing-robot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've observed that flaws in Apple products seem to most affect those who do not use Apple products.

    --
    How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
    1. Re:Not unexpected. by jbolden · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I've observed that flaws in Apple products seem to most affect those who do not use Apple products.

      Well said. There are criticisms of Apple products by Apple users. But they have a level of nuance that's appropriate. The Apple haters who know nothing of Apple products yet thing they do, you end up having to argue with all the time. I've noticed the same thing about Oracle on /. as well whenever databases come up.

    2. Re:Not unexpected. by peragrin · · Score: 5, Informative

      Apple supports hardware for 1 year standard warranty. No extra money spent. Heck I got apple to replace a logic board for free without an extended warranty. 2 .7 years after I bought it.

      Not getting your drive fixed is your fault not Apples

      Same goes for the hard drive. Apple would have replaced it for you.

      --
      i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
    3. Re:Not unexpected. by UnknowingFool · · Score: 5, Informative

      Apple replaced my HDD 5 years after warranty expired on my Mac because there was a bad batch of HDDs. They did the same with the nVidia failures that affected many OEMs.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    4. Re:Not unexpected. by scotts13 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Ultimately, I value my time enough that I will generally not purchase things I think will break and require fixing or taking to a repair shop. I'll spend extra on a dependable product. Apple computers have shown to not be dependable, despite being more expensive...

      Yeah, factually untrue. Industry statistics show Apple products to be consistently the most dependable you can buy. If that's not good enough to meet your standards for reliability, what does?

  2. Re:Apple's admission of guilt by Cheviot · · Score: 5, Informative

    Apple only removed non-Apple, emulated Fairplay DRM encoded music from iPods. Any music you actually ripped from CDs, downloaded from the internet or got from friends were completely and totally unaffected. Only music files that used a hack to make them appear to be protected by Apple's Fairplay DRM were removed.

  3. Re:Apple's admission of guilt by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 5, Informative

    That's a bit out of context... Apple threw up an error message when it detected the music DB had been messed with, and then restored the iPod contents from what was stored in iTunes. All Apple was testing for was that things had been messed with. If the rival music services (read: Real) had properly reverse engineered the sync process, there would have been no problem. Also, if they hadn't included DRM on their music and had pushed it through a regular iTunes sync, there wouldn't have been a problem. The only problem was when Real was attempting to sync their hacked-up version of FairPlay-DRM'd audio through their hacked-up version of an iTunes sync session to the iPod DB. If they got it wrong, everything was reset.

    Real got bitten again by embracing PlaysForSure, which eventually stopped being supported by MS altogether (you can't actually PLAY stuff encrypted with PlaysForSure anymore).

    Of course, Apple made it slightly more difficult by changing the sync protocl part way through this, which indicates they were putting up a token effort to prevent people doing an end-run around the sync process and the FairPlay DRM.

    The real losers here were people running Linux who wanted to use an iPod -- same thing happened there. But that group wouldn't be as useful in a class action suit -- plus, the number of people affected is significantly smaller.