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DRM The Courts Apple

10-Year-Old iTunes DRM Lawsuit Heading To Trial 246

Posted by samzenpus from the getting-around-to-it dept.
itwbennett writes Plaintiffs in the Apple iPod iTunes antitrust litigation complain that Apple married iTunes music with iPod players, and they want $350 million in damages. The lawsuit accuses Apple of violating U.S. and California antitrust law by restricting music purchased on iTunes from being played on devices other than iPods and by not allowing iPods to play music purchased on other digital music services. Late Apple founder Steve Jobs will reportedly appear via a videotaped statement during the trial, scheduled to begin Tuesday morning in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
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10-Year-Old iTunes DRM Lawsuit Heading To Trial More

10-Year-Old iTunes DRM Lawsuit Heading To Trial

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  • Sweeeet (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Colin Castro ( 2881349 ) on Monday December 01, 2014 @03:24PM (#48500003)
    I bet I'll make out in the tens of cents, maybe even the dollars if I'm lucky.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Eosi ( 3781645 )
      Well, since this does not appear to be a class action law suit, I think your kinda screwed as to getting any money.

      That said, they are basing their complaint on everyone who ever bought an iPod.. Which begs the question why its not a class action suit....

      So who knows.

    • I notice that the lawsuit specifically defines members of the class action as people who "purchased one of the iPod models listed below directly from Apple between September 12, 2006 and March 31, 2009"

  • Late Apple founder Steve Jobs will reportedly appear via a videotaped statement during the trial

    As was often written on various propaganda posters in USSR: Lenin died but his cause lives on! .

    • Re:Steve Jobs vs. Vladimir Lenin (Score:4, Informative)

      by i kan reed ( 749298 ) on Monday December 01, 2014 @03:31PM (#48500075) Homepage Journal

      It really didn't though. Nearly all the naive idealists in the soviet government got axed by Stalin.

      • I meant to make a joke with my original posting, but you chose to bleat something about politics... So, here it is...

        Nearly all the naive idealists in the soviet government got axed by Stalin.

        The naivette is all yours. If Lenin was any better than Stalin, it was not at all obvious. It was he, who presided over campaign of mass-murder known as Red Terror [wikipedia.org] — including killing off of the Russian clergy [wikipedia.org]. And, yes, he not only tolerated, but ordered taking — and executing — of the opponents' ho [wikipedia.org]

        • Oh no, naive idealists kill people all the time.

          They just kill them for conflicting with their ideals, rather than for being political nuisances.

          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            by mi ( 197448 )

            They just kill them for conflicting with their ideals, rather than for being political nuisances.

            The underlying cause of this tolerance of mass-murder — which leads to occasional outbreaks of actual mass-murder — is the collectivist notion, that the glorious Collective ought to trump the cantankerous Individual — for The Greater Good. Once you accept it, there is no stopping...

            The US too had a Civil War — 50 years before Russia. There was plenty of killing, some of it unwarranted, b

            • Re:OT: Vladimir Lenin - a murderer like all Commie (Score:4, Insightful)

              by i kan reed ( 749298 ) on Monday December 01, 2014 @05:40PM (#48501313) Homepage Journal

              And here's a different naive idealist.

              Collectivism is an inevitable consequence of society. Society is an inevitable consequence of humanity. Deal with it.

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by DES ( 13846 ) *

              [...] The US too had a Civil War — 50 years before Russia. There was plenty of killing, some of it unwarranted, but there were no mass-murders. That, in my not so humble opinion, is because we are (or were) an Individualist country. On contrast [sic], 70 years before our Civil War here, France too had its own — being a Collectivist society, they had an awful lot of mass-executions. [...]

              The American Civil War was, for all practical purposes, a conventional war between two nation states. The French Revolution was not; it was not even a civil war (unless you count the revolt in Vendée where loyalists attacked republican forces with material support from the United Kingdom). The mass executions of the Reign of Terror were political purges, pure and simple. Meanwhile, your “individualist country” is responsible for the enslavement, internment and mass murder of millions of its

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

          Perhaps the problem is that the kind of people who can bring about large changes in society tend to be egotistical, ambitious, dictatorial personalities. Those who desire power are often the least likely to use it well. That doesn't mean that such a society is impossible, but merely that the kinds of people who are capable of bringing it about without turning into dictators are so rare that such a person has not yet been born.

      • Here is a book you need to read: Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe [amazon.com]. It is extensively footnoted so you can check out all the references if you desire. Lenin's benevolence was a myth created after his death. Hell, check out the Kronstadt Rebellion [pitzer.edu] - people rebelled against the Communists in 1921. Lenin accused them of being imperialist stooges because they were starving and wanted to eat. He crushed them utterly, killing most and executing the rest.

    • Must.
      Crush.
      Capitalism.
      http://vimeo.com/87962641 [vimeo.com]

    • More like the wise Hari Seldon who appears in hologram after death to guide the fledgling Foundation in its quest for growth.

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward

        More like the wise Hari Seldon who appears in hologram after death to guide the fledgling Foundation in its quest for growth.

        The great Jobs will iAppear at various iTimes throughout iHistory to help guide the iFroundation in it's iQuest.
        Unknown is that behind it all the ultimate guiding mind is an iRobot following the zero'th law.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by halivar ( 535827 )

        But he never told them the secret to defeating the Mule: a functional, minimalist neo-industrial interface inspired by Dieter Rams!

    • And just like in old Soviet times people think "Why oh why can't it be the other way 'round?"

  • Saw the title, thought they arrested a 10-year old (Score:5, Funny)

    by QilessQi ( 2044624 ) on Monday December 01, 2014 @03:59PM (#48500369)

    for illegal file sharing. Because plausible.

  • The problem for the plaintiffs will be how they define the market if they want to succeed in an anti-trust case. If they define too narrowly or too broad, Apple will win. I also wonder how they get around the contract that Apple has with the copyright holders. After all, Apple was a reseller of their music and if DRM was a condition then they can't get around that.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jbolden ( 176878 )

      They are defining it as anyone who purchased an iPod. Believe it or not they are arguing the purchase of the iPod was where the unfair too high prices happened not the purchase of music. I.E. the people who bought the following (list from the suit itself):

      iPod Standard, Classic, Special Models
      iPod (5th generation) 30 GB
      iPod (5th generation) 80 GB
      iPod U2 Special Edition 30 GB
      iPod Classic 120 GB
      iPod Classic 80 GB
      iPod Classic 160 GB
      iPod (5th generation) 60 GB

      iPod shuffle Models
      iPod shuffle (2nd generation) 1

      • But what are the defining as the market that was restricted? Certainly they can't claim "music" or even digital music. One of the tests of monopoly is whether suitable alternatives exist for the market. For example, in the MS case, you really could not get another OS for an x86. Linux was in their infancy and OS X would not run on x86 hardware.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jbolden ( 176878 )

          The market is iPod customers. The restraint was what music played on it. The limitations on music leading to higher prices. That is unfair competition for songs led to higher prices on the players. Dumb theory... so don't blame the messenger.

  • Do they really have to drag Steve (Jobs) from his grave (even if only by video)?
    Maybe he does a nice introduction a la "If you see this video, I'm dead. Thanks for stealing an hour of my dwindling life for it. Not".

  • If you read the suit they are alleging that not playing other music caused the iPod to cost more, not music to cost more, "the software updates caused iPod prices to be higher than they otherwise would have been." I don't see how they can possibly prove that. I'd suspect if anything the song restriction caused iPod prices to be lower.

    • Yeah, I don't if they know that complexity costs more. In the case of the MP3 players, that would mean a higher chip cost as the audio decoding was inherently hardware driven not software driven. I wonder if they called Wolfson Microelectronics to the stand?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jbolden ( 176878 )

        Good point. iPod's played .mp3's fine. But absolutely there were limits as far as other DRMed music standards. I suspect that's going to be an easy disputed fact for Apple to win on.

  • The lawsuit accuses Apple of violating U.S. and California antitrust law by restricting music purchased on iTunes from being played on devices other than iPods and by not allowing iPods to play music purchased on other digital music services.

    Unless I'm mistaken, wasn't this also the cause of the eventual death of DRM?

    The music industry didn't like Apple's desire to sell every track at the same price (instead preferring to charge higher for more in demand music) - yet found themselves in the uncomfortable po

    • The death of DRM in music only. It's still going in video, software and ebooks. Still being trivially broken, too.

  • Plaintiff bitten by their own DRM (Score:3)

    by wvmarle ( 1070040 ) on Monday December 01, 2014 @10:02PM (#48503293)

    It's hard to fail Apple for not allowing music purchased from other stores to play on the iPod. It'd have required Apple to support third-party DRM (which would cost Apple money), while iirc the original iPod would play mp3, amongst other formats. Can one really demand someone else to play your resticted-play files? Especially when that other party does support various other industry standards already?

    Bitten by their own DRM I'd say. Proves again that DRM stands for Digital Restrictions Management - in this case restricting to which devices may play a file. The iPod was not included. The moment they dropped this restriction from their store, the iPod could play their files just fine. Which, of course, is in part what did in DRM on music files. It's too restrictive on the sellers.

    The only possibly valid claim I see is Apple not licencing their DRM system to other players.

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