"The key to such a lawsuit would be convincing a court that a single product brand like iTunes is a market in itself separate from the rest of the online music market, according to Ernest Gellhorn, an antitrust law professor at George Mason University. There is legal precedent for such claims, but courts usually conclude competing products as viable alternatives, Gellhorn said. "

iTunes Lawsuit

MWAHAHA!

Resistance is futile.

Wow, that seems like an impossible suit to win. Perhaps it's brought by a wealthy technophile who got tired of hitting Apple's feedback page.

It's frivolous! The judge will say if you don't want to buy Apple, try Napster of any of the other MS based services. No chance. Waste of time and money.

I'm glad that at least someone found out about Apple's little secret...I guess in 5 years from now iTunes user will realize that they are stuck with Apple's iPod...that's great for Apple, because they can charge a lot extra or get away with some average product...

Did you even read the article?

Seems like a very very interesting case. This is what I would argue or look for if I was the judge. Were users of the iTunes service FORCED to buy an iPod cause of the DRM? Anyone have the Terms of Service from when iTunes started? And any revision there after? Was there a disclaimer in the iTunes music software when installed/or when you bought tunes that they could only be played on iPods.

If I was the judge if those conditions weren't met I would deem the iTunes service failing in Trade Practices act under which such information was not disclosed. i.e. deception.

Just my 2 cents.

Regards

I don't use iTunes or an iPod, so I may get this wrong, but....

When you buy music from the iTunes store, aren't you allowed to burn it to an audio CDR if you wish? I seem to recall reading somewhere that this is permitted. In that case, this is the route to getting your iTunes-sourced music onto any other DAP you like. Or would this method be deemed too complex?

They can be played on computers running iTunes (that's where you bought them, BTW). So it can't be deception - that is, they aren't forcing you to buy an iPod to listen to your music. They are only forcing you to buy one if you want to listen to it on the run, which is a specific case.

Also, cliveb's point is very valuable. You can burn the tunes to CDDA and listen to them everywhere.

Motorola has released iTunes phone at CES 2005. Couln't find english link though.

I dunno. It could be argued that Apple's unwillingness to license FairPlay to allow competing MP3 players is an unlawful practice since it leads to vendor lock-in.

If they'd license FairPlay so that, say, iRiver could play iTMS files, then there'd be no issue.

Motorola previews iTunes phone

I think deals like this could the future for iTunes. It's a great way to further increase the market-share.

They don't really have any reason to do that as long as the iPod is the supreme #1.. iPod is where the money for Apple is right now, so why help out its direct competitors when they aren't even close? What Apple does isn't illegal, since there are over a dozen services which offer exactly the same product.

The Motorola deal shows they aren't unwilling to expand to other markets though

I agree that they don't have any reason to do that, but whether it's illegal or not is up for debate. You could interpret these actions as being unlawful due to the Clayton Act or possibly part of the Sherman Act. It's a matter of interpretation though, and a judge could go either way. The point being that it's not wholly clear cut here.

Just having competition doesn't make everything hunky-dory. In fact, having no competition is not illegal, strangely enough. Specific types of actions that tend towards a monopoly situation are illegal. This is an often misunderstood part of antitrust laws, I grant you.


Agreed, assuming this thing ever sees the light of day.

I hope this guy wins. I like iTunes and all, I just don't like the idea of buying $400 equipment to play a $.99 song.

$400 equipment? You don't need an iPod (which is $299) to play iTMS files, all you need is a PC

Exactly. People here are completely missing the point that you don't need an iPod to listen to tunes bought at the iTMS. In principle, if you bought them, you can already play them (since you use the very same program to buy and to playback).

true, but not if you want to listen to it on a portable player...in that case you have to buy an iPod...

Or you can burn the tunes to CDDA and listen on any goddamned discman

Dude, you know this is the 21st century, right? I mean, might as well bang it out using sticks and stones...

Or rerip the CD to mp3 again. After all, if you'd spend $0.99 on a 128 kbps file instead of a roughly $0.99 track on a $10(?) CD, you shouldn't be minding issues with transcoding. The economics may be wrong since I do not live in the US, but I hope everybody gets my point.

Your economics are right. Buying retail, 50% used, I get about $0.85 per track, and about $1 per track buying new from Amazon (more on old albums, but regaining with many remasters having bonus tracks, and new albums having 12-15 tracks). Hence why I see no reason for an online music store until it legally offers DRM-free lossless files and liner notes . OTOH, many people listen to songs rather than albums.

THere are such on-line stores already.


Back to Itunes lockout:
I am still stuck on the shift from "we need DRM to keep people from sharing files" to the reality that they want DRM so you have to buy a player from the company that sold you the song. then you are locked into buying songs (DRM"d downloads anyway) only from the company store. Mission accomplished.

edit: additional yum-yum use your captive customers to pressure content producers into giving you better margins and/or exclusive distribution.

Once you have paid for music, regardless of what format it is and where it is from/how much it costs, i think you should be rightfully entitled to do what you want with it as long as it doesnt invlove piracy. So this means that you should be able to play the music on anything that you want. Just like if i buy a CD from a store, whether its one from the bargain bin at 1/4 of the retail price or brandnew, i can come home and rip the music track to my computer and use it with any portable device i want. Apple has obviously created its 'FairPlay DRM' so the only portable music player you can use it with is the Apple Ipod, not to prevent piracy. If apple were really focused on preventing piracy they would make ipods that can'nt be read from, so you cant transfer music files to the PC from it. Yeah you can burn a CD from the protected AAC and then just rip the tracks to MP3, but do you really think this is fair since you will lose quality from an already compressed, lossy format such AAC, that you already paid good money for?

Screw Apple, Screw the Ipod, and Screw Itunes Go out and buy the CD
and really support the artists.

good point there.

No i dont want to be able to copy files and burn them because there is a slight possibility of loosing quality i cannot hear. Dump digital music and the p2p revolution, I pray Britney gets another porsche....

[/quote]

good point there.

No i dont want to be able to copy files and burn them because there is a slight possibility of loosing quality i cannot hear. Dump digital music and the p2p revolution, I pray Britney gets another porsche....
[/quote]

I didn't mean to say that we should "Dump digital music and the p2p revolution"
but why support Apple and Itunes when you can by music from another online music store that isnt protected, or buy the CD retail which probably won't cost much more anyway. A percentage of the money you pay for a song from itunes obviously goes to apple, so why support them if youre going to have to mess around burning CD's everytime you want to transfer files to your non-ipod player.
If youre going to pay MONEY for your music, id suggest buying the album (CD) of your favourite artists then from itunes, thats if, you really want to support them.
And whether or not britany gets a Porche out of this is your choice, i wouldnt even download her music FREE

A percentage of the money you pay for a CD from the store obviously goes to the store-owner (and distribution, packaging, etc)

I bet the artists make more from an album sold on iTunes than Amazon

I guess you were joking ...I'm not gonna use some heavy, bulky discman that holds 80 minutes of music...what if I wanna delete a song or whatever...and burning is too much hassle anyway...besides that, I need Playlists, wanna see song names etc. and all the features a mp3 player offers...


this is ridiculous! I buy some song that has an average quality...burn it on a CD and re-rip it - just to make the quality even worse than it already is? Yeah sure, the time I spend on doing that I rather buy the CD and have the bonus of being able to rip it to whatever format + bitrate I want + no DRM crap...


I agree on that. The P2P community doesn't depend on Apple or other Music Stores...they get their sources from somewhere else...I mean, P2P has been around way before iTunes etc. existed and they still managed to get every song...sometimes even before the Album has been offically released and they also have it in better quality than iTunes & Co....so what are they afraid of?

It also seems to me, that the music industry still doesn't want to sell their music online...therefore they come up with some stores that are not of use at all just to see them fail and make the claim 'Well we've tried, but it didn't work'...

For instance, iTunes is only available for Windows + Mac Users...other Stores require IE...etc. etc.

Apple gets about 6 cents on every song, and about all of that go to bandwidth costs. Steve Jobs says that he doesn't understand why other companies start online music stores - because they don't make money. The entire purpose of the iTunes Music Store is to sell iPods.

Duh. You asked about listening to it on a portable player, I gave you a very universal solution. If you want all that extra functionality, then it's really up to you to consider that before choosing an online music store.

And no, I wasn't joking. Only fools like you start laughing at a reasonable answer.

For most people it's easier just to ignore any rational idea that's given to them so they can continue arguing like they're still correct.

I have a couple of questions. These are genuine enquiries, bearing in mind that I don't have iTunes or an iPod:
1. Does Apple still say that the purpose of DRM is to prevent file sharing?
2. If I have an iTunes-purchased song on my Mac/PC, can I copy it to more than one iPod (eg. mine and a friend's)?
If the answer to both of these questions is "yes", then considering that the vast majority of DAPs out there are iPods, the claim that DRM prevents sharing is immediately exposed as bogus. What would the legal implications be of showing in this way that the primary purpose of the DRM is to leverage iPod sales?

To share m4p's with friends, you must give them your account username and password, so no, few people share their m4p's

Record companies set the tone for what the DRM should be, not the tech companies (believe it or not)

1. Yes.
2. Yes, with provisions. iTunes is rather picky about how it copies around files. If your friend's iPod is put into manual mode, and you connect it to your computer, and manually drag the purchased music to their iPod using iTunes, then yeah, it'll work. But they still won't be able to play it on their computer if they copy it back, and if they put it into sync mode with their computer, it'll erase the song off their iPod. iTunes makes it kinda difficult to do this sort of thing unless you use manual mode on the iPod all the time, which is rather inconvienent given the way iTunes works. Basically, "sync" mode, the default way of doing things, makes it such that the iPod is sorta linked to that particular computer/iTunes. Attempting to sync with another computer erases everything on the iPod and copies stuff from the new system. Manual mode bypasses all that and lets the iPod roam freely between any machines, but it's rather annoying to manage that way.

But the short of it is that the way the iPod stores the key for the purchased music allows you to put that purchased music on any iPod you like as long as you do it from a computer authorized for that purchased music.

Which you can only have 5 authorized computers of. So it's not like you can put your music on all your friends iPods... you can put your music on iPods that you have authorized the computer with your account and password.

OK guys, thanks for the clarifications. So in summary it seems that although you can copy iTunes-bought stuff onto multiple iPods, you have to jump through a few hoops, and there are limits even then. In that case, I guess Apple can still reasonably claim that their DRM is there to prevent illegal sharing.

Yeah, silly Apple..

I'm sure the hordes of Solaris users are just itching with their credit cards..

Hmm. No, I can put my purchased music on any iPod that I can connect to an authorized PC. Meaning that if you hand me an iPod, any iPod, I can plug it in, say "No" to the dialog about linking it with this PC, stick it in manual mode, and copy all the music I like to it. For as many iPods as you can hand me.

The iPod will then be able to play that music just fine, until you try to sync it with an iTunes without that music, at which point the music is erased.

In other words, I can put purchased music on an unlimited number of iPod's. The weird way iTunes does things causes issues, I grant you, but there's no limit to how many iPod's I can load that music onto. You just can't load it back off to a PC without authorizing that PC. Actually, using iTunes, you can't load it back off at all, you have to put it in disk mode and manually copy the file over.

Hmmmm....Sony Connect offers files in drm'ed ATRAC3 that is only playable on Sony devices like MiniDisc and Network walkman. Perhaps I should purchase a track from them and sue because it won't play on anything but an overpriced Sony device

The only difference is that Sony does license atrac3 decoding. There are, for example, MD players made by Panasonic, JVC, Aiwa (a Sony division?). But I'm not sure if third party MD players would play such unATTRACtive DRM'ed content

As someone said, there are other brands of atrack pllayer.

The other half of the question is: Has Sony actively stopped other vendors from supplying DRM songs to atrack players? By "active" I mean like Apple did by changing the DRM format to invalidate songs already supplied by another company, or taking a legal stance that they won't license.

Except that's not your friends iPods... unless your friends all feel like syncing your music library to their iPod. You can't syncronize an iPod with more than one computer without erasing the contents of the iPod.

No, I can't "sync" it, but I can stick it manual mode then copy the additional music over to it. That works fine.