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.