Apple Wins iTunes DRM Case

An anonymous reader sends word that Apple's iTunes DRM case has already been decided. The 8-person jury took only a few hours to decide that the features introduced in iTunes 7.0 were good for consumers and did not violate antitrust laws. Following the decision, the plaintiff's head attorney Patrick Coughlin said an appeal is already planned. He also expressed frustrations over getting two of the security features — one that checks the iTunes database, and another that checks each song on the iPod itself — lumped together with the other user-facing features in the iTunes 7.0 update, like support for movies and games. "At least we got a chance to get it in front of the jury," he told reporters. ... All along, Apple's made the case that its music store, jukebox software, and hardware was simply an integrated system similar to video game consoles from Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. It built all those pieces to work together, and thus it would be unusual to expect any one piece from another company to work without issues, Apple's attorneys said. But more importantly, Apple offered, any the evolution of its DRM that ended up locking out competitors was absolutely necessary given deals it had with the major record companies to patch security holes.

Comments

I'm shocked.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe the 700 billion dollar corporation won this.

Re:I'm shocked.

[alen]

i'd be surprised if apple didn't win the case. they blocked and non-apple DRM like every other company out there and Real had to hack it. but in the end itunes allowed you to use any hardware you wanted as long as the maker coded to a few of apple's API's. i use my Note 3 with itunes on my macbook. itunes itself has supported non-apple devices for many years as long as the files don't have any DRM.

Re:I'm shocked.

[amaurea]

Doesn't the USA have a concept of jury nullification, where the jury does much more than just determine facts, and actually takes a position on what's right and wrong?

Re: I'm shocked.

[ColdWetDog]

Why was this modded down? It's the truth. Oh mods, cover the truth with your mod points. Yay.

When I was your age, we knew that you started out at -1 as an AC. And we liked it.

Kids these days.

Re:I'm shocked.

[JohnFen]

Whatever harm iTunes did, seems to have resulted in a far more vibrant marketplace now than it was years ago.

Be careful about confusing causation with correlation.

Huh?

[gstoddart]

Yet beyond monetary damages, the case has zero bearing on the modern technology industry, as both the MP3 music file format and the iPod itself have waned in popularity

Wait, what? People no longer use MP3s? They don't buy iPods?

This sounds like an odd claim ... I've got way more MP3s now that I did in 2005, and it's the primary way I listen to music. When I buy a CD (yes, I still do that) the first thing I do is rip it.

Sure, there are streaming services. But I'm betting lots of people still play MP3s on portable players.

It's not as glamorous, but saying MP3s have no bearing on the modern technology industry? I'm not buying that.

Re:Yes this is Terrible.

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean other than they never wanted it in the first place.

Re:Deals?

[Ixokai]

Your analogy is dumb.

The customers would never have had access to the music catalogs of the major music labels were it not for deals to implement DRM and patch holes when that DRM is exploited.

Real exploited a hole to create fakely-DRM'd content, and Apple had to close it or they'd be in breach of contract and suddenly the ITMS has no content.

(At least, in theory. In reality Apple got big enough by this point that they were able to muscle the labels into letting them un-DRM the entire catalog, which seems quite the opposite of illegally screwing customers.)