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167 Comments
- Nowheredan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8This is a total farce. Apple is not discouraging anyone from using another service or player. It's absolutely no different from cell phones - Can I use T Mobile services from a Sprint phone? No. Can I use Apple services from a Creative player? No. What's the damn problem?
- Meowmix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5msaleem: That's the exact opposite idea. And antitrust case is to get them to make it so iPod competitors have a chance.
But, it is good, if the outcome of the case is actually reasonable.
Apple needs to allow people to put their iTMS files on other players. One of my favorite things about the iTMS songs, is the 5-burn license. It's very fair, and I can have hard copies of all my music. But, Apple should make it 5-burns or exports. I think that's fair. - Urusai, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Hell yeah, maybe Microsoft can finally get a break. We need a lawsuit suing Torvalds for monopolizing the free OS market, too, maybe Hurd can finally make the big leagues.
- teece, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Really, Approved!!! *rolls eyes*
The interesting thing here is that FairPlay, the technology that keeps iTMS tracks off of competitors devices is as much a product of the RIAA as anything else. I suppose Apple could license it, but would their competitors do the same? No. So how does a lawsuit against Apple do anything to address the fundamental problem -- which is DRM.
But that is the thing about DRM -- it is tailor made to build monopolies.
Nothing can be done about the iPod's market dominance unless DRM itself is fundamentally changed.
Good luck. I'd love to see DRM laws sensibly changed. But I'm not holding my breath. - anthony808, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"If they face stiff competition, it will cause innovation."
Apple has never needed competition to innovate. - ArthurSucks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3All that innovating should be illegal. Creating a superior product, hell that should be illegal too. How dare you Steve Jobs, how dare you be a good business man. HOW dare you start the first successful online music download site.
Damn. We should sue everyone who is more successful than ourselves. - jediboytj, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"awesome, i think the ipod is great but apple deserves to lose money for forcing DRM down people's throat"
um... ehem... talk to the RIAA, they are the ones requiring the DRM to distribute their music... apple wouldnt be allowed to have a music store without DRM.... and if you dont like it, buy the damn CD. - dBass, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5BTW, many seem to be assuming getting sued means you're guilty and will loose.
That's not what a law suite means friends. - TuxFan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Frivolous lawsuits unleashed. We need tort reform 2.0 as of last week.
- msaleem, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3you didn't get the idea. If they face stiff competition, it will cause innovation. That's what fair markets are supposed to do.
- macgabriel87, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2yeah i think apple needs to back off a bit with this itunes + ONLY ipod
- msaleem, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Honestly, I think this is good. Finally we will get some decent competition, and a better iTunes/iPod combination from Apple. About time we had built in mic ana radio, perhaps even wifi
- ethangj, on 02/27/2009, -0/+2I think this is idiocy.
Apple hasn't violated anti-trust laws unless they have maliciously kept other companies down, and they haven't.
There's nothing wrong with Apple only allowing itunes songs on the ipod.. you may not like it... so.. go download songs from one of the other half dozen online music stores. There ARE plenty of alternatives to both itunes and the ipod, and ones that are every bit as good, also. Apple is just lucky enough to have their products be the trend. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3You know you've made it when you start getting anti-trust lawsuits thrown at you.
- dBass, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2SniperGX1 said: "awesome, i think the ipod is great but apple deserves to lose money for forcing DRM down people's throat"
O.K., that's it, I'm leaving this bed of enlightenment. At least try to use the stuff between your ears.
Is it Apple or is it the music labels and RIAA? If Apple has to go along with the labels and change the pricing from 99¢ to what the labels want, we'll here whining like "Apple is forcing $1.50 downloads down our throats". - drakethegreat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Ok lets really THINK about this kind of thing before we start jumping on the band wagon of screw the corporations. Obviously Apple has taken advantage of the fact that they have their music software with an integrated music download service. What does that have to do with the iPod though?
I think people are forgetting that you can use other software to interface with the iPod... Winamp has a plugin on windows, Linux has a program called gtkpod, and I'm sure there are other choices. The iPod doesn't require DRMed iTunes music files. So I ask again, how is the iPod locked into this setup?
Now lets look at the other services. They are DRMed WMA files which ONLY WORK ON WINDOWS. How is that not unfair competition? You have to own a windows machine just to play them... There are even mp3 players that require DRMed WMA files to run which restricts them to windows only. The iPod doesn't have this. Nobody requires you to buy music from iTunes.
Maybe idiots should do their research before they sue. Unfornately the judge obviously doesn't know these things either so its going to court where Apple's legal team will probably present similar arguments to the ones I presented here, then this will be dropped but at the expense of more money that could of been spent on better things. - darkten, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1At mlingojones:
What, did you stop at the parts that made your "point"? :) Keep reading son, right there on that same page there is a very accurate description of the type of monopoly Apple is presently enjoying, along with two particular companies that most agree got out of hand with the exact same type of monopoly...and one of them only had *64%* market share.
The problem was with that one, that even the combined efforts of over 100 smaller competitors in the same space *were not enough* to effectively wrest any control, or gain any further inroads whatsoever into the market.
Sound...familiar?
Look, all Apple needs to do is license Fairplay, or pick up WMA. If the iTunes/iPod platform is *truly* the "overwhelming platform of choice" then its a non-issue, isn't it?
Personally, *I* am not likely to buy any other player, and hey, "the money is in the iPod, not the store"...
Right?
Can't have it both ways. And Mac people (and YES I'M one of them, proud since the Glorious 80's) wonder why they are dismissed outright...why they are marginalized and ridiculed.
The knee-jerk defensiveness of Apple on this position is a damned good yardstick to measure by.
It doesn't matter if there are "million different choices" out their. All of the WMA/PlayForSure might combined is a pimple on the asscheek of this *particular market* and they don't have a hope in heaven of penetration at this point...people have *huge* catalogs of AV in Apple's format that are useless on anything else...and as it has been shown, anyone that has attempted to provide this interoperability (this is why the DCMA is so bad, btw) has been crushed by DCMA-protected "locks".
Customers have actually been caused *material harm* in this regard.
You'd better believe its "worth looking into". - wess2500, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1oh cmon you gotta be kidding me...a company comes out with a dominant product and then they get sued for monopolizing the market???? Apple does have a ***** of competitors, they're just small and cant produce anything to Apple's magnitude..oh well, stop crying, apple is just better than you.
- robbh66, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Maybe I dont know as much as I think, but dont we still have 99cent songs because Jobs wont let the music companies jack up the prices? And this genius goes and sues him?
- Brutusfly, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1How about an iRiver player that only works with Windows Media Player's "Plays for Sure" DRM and only supports the convicted monopolies OS?
- felchdonkey, on 10/12/2007, -5/+6That's!!! Very!!! Interesting!!! Could!!! You!!! Please!!! Calm!!! Down!!! With!!! The!!! Gratuitous!!! Exclamation!!! Marks!!!
- dcmiltown, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This whole thing is not going to go anywhere so it's pointless to argue back and forth whether they are a monopoly or not.
- drkblu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I think most of us will agree that the accusations against Apple are ridiculous. I can't stand Apple, iPod, or iTunes. There are alternatives that aren't only comparable, they're down right superior, in my opinion.
Their fad-like popularity is the only thing that keeps them dominating the market. - manatee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Digg has a monopoly on tech news... i'm suing!!!
- stilesja, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Its not illegal to have a monopoly, its illegal to abuse your monopoly to the detriment of consumers. Seeing as how Apple neither has the lowest nor the highest price, customers appear to be voting with their wallets that the like Apple's model.
- darkten, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Wow. That’s all I can say here...after being ‘hung up on’ by a fellow Mac user for picking ‘the wrong side’ in this non-debate. The fact is, it feels good to be on top, some of us have a deep ‘love’ for Apple.
But love is often blind. Apple has an effective monopoly on the Online Digital Music (and soon, probably video) market. This is a fact.
Apple has an *overwhelming* market share of the Hard Disk digital player market...and likely the flash market too. All of this in about 4 years time...from nowhere. Sound familiar?
Alone, these two things are perfectly alright. But the vertical integration in these two markets, and a lack of interoperability, and fairly aggressive tactics to break interoperability are a problem.
And let’s not kid ourselves here: *Apple* benefits from this far more that the music rights holders. In the beginning, many, many large artists were not playing along, but the fact is, if you wanna move music online, there really isn’t anywhere else to go.
What’s really...weird...is that these same points people are using to defend Apple’s position are the same one’s Microsoft proponents were using. The difference is, by the time anyone stepped in to do anything about it, it was far too late. Everyone lost.
This is an emerging market. You can argue up one side and down the other about inferior competitive products or whatever, but if someone made a music store that sold songs for a nickel less per, worked with iPod/iTunes, and still had DRM...there would be more places to shop.
Or what of the higher quality audio and video people clamor for? Not gonna happen.
As well, if other folks stores could sell players that could play Fairplay DRM music (and lets be honest...this ‘they can sell in mp3’ is a strawman; no Major Content Provider is licensing non-DRM music/video...stay with reality) then there might be room for some new emerging and compelling players out there.
The likely remedy here tho would be that Apple would have to adopt or support another technology; the burden would be on them to interoperate with the rest of the market. And that market uses Helix or WMA DRM.
As it stands, there is a wall there, and there is no way to penetrate it. Think about 5, 10 years from now. What if somehow, Apple was bought, or was no longer “the Apple that we love”.
If it were *any other company* would this be “ok”? Seems to me that when it was, it wasn’t. All I’m sayin’ - compson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1jesus people...
the case likely survived a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim pursuant to rule 12(B)(6). the judge looked at all of the pleadings, and decided that it is conceivable that the guy could win, maybe. the guy is going to lose. badly. apple's only argument needs to be that any old music seller can make their content ipod friendly if they want.
game over. - MonkeyFit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I have to agree with Cowboy5995. I think the real reason he is suing, is because Apple likes to keep a lock on Fairplay protected AAC files. There are absolutley no other music services out there that he can buy music for his iPod from. This is different from the cell phone industry because each cell phone is usually covered by at least a couple different carriers. And with each attempt to make their files playable on an iPod, Apple would lock out RealMedia with a firmware update according to the Wikipedia article linked above. As far as the plugins for Winamp and linux, those are provided by third parties. And the list of players that iTunes supports linked above shows the supported players for the Mac OS X version of iTunes. Does that list cross into Windows as well? Also, there are some developers out there working on ways to access iTMS on linux with a paid account. Each time they do, Apple locks them out again with a new update. And while I doubt this guy will actually win the case, there are certainly reasons the judge approved at least parts of it.
- grayapple, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Other players work with iTunes, very few players that can't use the DRM of iTunes Music Store. If you don't like it... Napster and Coca-cola have online music stores, go there.
- iSEPIC, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Gee all the whiners on this particular digg, were just over at the MS monpolizing digg cussing out MS for doing the same thing (e.g. putting IE, notepad, Media player) on it's desktop - *****, it wasn't like you couldnt' go buy something else, or better yet, go install something else ---- eat your own words now.
- Mediaright, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Guys, I know Apple is a closed music system, but honestly, that's how they make their money. They give the music and networks most of the song revenue, plus they have a huge bill from Akami for the bandwidth costs. The iPods are what Apple makes money from. Opening up the iPod system would damage Apple's earnings at least fairly badly. I agree it isn't the best system for the consumer, but you need to look at this from their angle. This lawsuit was bound to happen but it's unfounded and frivolous.
- bpapa, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This is frikkin absurd. There a million different MP3 players and a million different ways to DL music.
- geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1"What if I love itunes, but can't stand the ipod, maybe it's out of my budget, maybe I'm tired of the screen scratching up, or maybe I just think it's a dumbass design and I like something else better? ... sorry! itunes only works with ipod.. you can jump through some hoops like burn your playlist to a cd and then re-encode it back to mp3, or wait for a way to break the encryption again.. but that's just stupid .."
FUD. iTunes works with any number of MP3 players, plug yours in and see if it's compatible (you can find a list here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93548, however note that it hasn't been updated in a long time, and lots of newer players are just as compatible as these older ones).
However, iTunes Music Store DOES NOT work with any other player than Apple's, and the definite reason for this is the licensing of the DRM. IF YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THIS, APPLE IS NOT TO BLAME. I cannot say that enough; Apple licenses FairPlay from another company (Veridisk), and only uses it because this is the only way the RIAA will allow them to sell the music. IF YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH OTHER SERVICES NOT SELLING IPOD COMPATIBLE DRM'D MUSIC, APPLE IS NOT TO BLAME: the iPod uses a number of well established, standardized audio/music and video formats, all of which any other company could use. However, if a company were to talk to Apple to get a license for the DRM format, it would probably be a sell, however, the price of such a deal would have to be added to every subsequent song, thus increasing the cost and decreasing the company's will to do this (the music business isn't very profittable for anyone except the RIAA. Cutting into your own profits to sell music cheaper is company suicide).
If you love iTunes, use it. If you love iTunes Music Store, use it. If you want non-DRM'd music, go to the RIAA and protest, don't shoot the messanger. (Oh, and by the way, the protocol for the protection of the music iTunesMusic Store uses is actually fairly well known; there's a Wikipedia entry on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairPlay, there is an available decryptor (HYMN, written by DVD Jon), and there are other ways to browse the iTunes Music Store not using iTunes (check out DownhillBattle for the perl script)). - Exzero, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I told you all I heard the anti trust lawyers coming out of the woodworks I TOLD YA I TOLD YA
- tavisjohn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Apple needs to get a clue. You can only use an iPod with iTunes. You also can NOT use ANY OTHER mp3 player with iTunes (Well not easily or directly)
Apple should allow other services to work with the iPod. Apple should also set their iTunes service to work with other brand MP3 players! - tehJR, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Like the previous poster:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93548,
iTunes DOES work with other MP3 players.
But those songs bought on the iTMS will only work on the iPod. But hey, aren't you the same people that complain that the iTMS is a joke too?
"I record my own songs at the bands shows in 2012kbps and get the band to sign the mic, that is the only way i listen to songs. Apple is ghey for not doing the same" - frem001, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0just buy cd's, i use multiple sources to get my music on my itunes playlists. a combination of hmv bought cd's, itunes downloads and p2p (when itunes doesn't have what i want). spread the love
- samdu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0What a waste of court time and taxpayer money. Apple pretty much has a functional monopoly in the online music/player market, sure. But that's not illegal. So, Apple will go to court, a long trial will take place, bogging down some court near Cupertino that could be used for a more valid case, and eventually be found not guilty. Bravo, genius.
- muikano, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I dont like Ipods because they dont have a replaceable battery. But it's not like they've got a stranglehold on the goram market. It's not like yuo can't transfer your DRMed apple music with a good Automator script. jesus. This is frivolous. I thought the courts were suppose to enforce public opnion. The public out there don't think Apple's doing bad. If that was the case, Apple's products would have inelastic demand. This is seriously bubkot. Apple, come on. All the government wants is a cut of the pie. It's just a little kickback. EVeryone else does it. Why don't you appease them? Your being difficult.
- NicP, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Really they should be sueing the RIAA for not allowing apple to sell non DRM'd files on itunes. I'd happily buy from itunes if it wasnt for the DRM
- optimusfx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@ replica
Perhaps iTunes and iPod by themselves were not necessarily innovative or first (save the scroll wheel), but its the *integration* between all points that *is* the innovation. Thats what Apple does best. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"awesome, i think the ipod is great but apple deserves to lose money for forcing DRM down people's throat"
umm, the RIAA basically forced DRM down Apples throats... do you think the RIAA would have allowed Apple to sell non-DRM music? It is a comprimise between the RIAA and the ITMS, the consumers are just caught in the middle... - optimusfx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Apple does not have a monopoly at all in anything. Never has. They were actually used as evidence that MS didnt have a monopoly in their anti-trust case. However, this case will raise issues and awareness of DRM. Apple *IS* reaping the benefits of the control DRM provides. MS, Sony, and Real do the same thing; they just didnt take advantage of it like Apple has. The problem is DRM, not Apple. If there is a monopoly in music, its the RIAA.
- gamekid, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Sony also has a music store, in case you didn't know, and it only downloads music in (*.omg or *.oma) file types.
*.OMG *.WTF *.BBQ?!? - geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"foulpudding...one question....if Windows is not a good thing...why is it so popular?"
Because Dell, HP and Gateway have deals with Microsoft that say if they sell any operating system except for the most current version of Windows, they have to pay the full OEM price of Windows (roughly $150), which means their computers would cost $150 more to purchase (since no company in their right mind would eat into their own profits to make a product cheaper). When you have a Mutual Exclusive license that gives you a 66% discount, you're not going to ***** that up. Dell has tried to jump through the hoops time and again with their lawyers and with all of their work, they still can't sell a machine without Windows on it for cheaper than one with Windows. That's how hard a stranglehold Microsoft has on the industry.
So it really isn't as much "Popular" as it is "Forced". Being a Nazi was "Popular" because it sure beat the alternative. - web.phreak, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Two words... ANAPOD EXPLORER
iTunes is bloated crap and the music store is a DRMed nightmare... - dBLiSS, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0They may not have a monopoly per say, but by not lisencing their FairPlay DRM to competitors, as well as controlling 70%+ of the mp3 player and online music market, you can say how an Investigation can be approved. No one is saying that the violated any laws, it's just prudent for competition to investigate. (Sorry to all you Apple Zealots that don't understand this)
- kcappraiser, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Guys, I hate apple, mainly because of you apple lemmings, but you can't penalize companies for creating a product that people want to use. Apple developed it and put their money in it. There are other products you can use. If this goes through, what incentive do other companies have to make good products, if they do will they have a lawsuit to look forward to?
- cpawl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This is just a cry for attention... Apple will win. The ipod is THEIR product that works with THEIR software. You do not have to use THEIR stuff... go to Walmart, buy a PC with your gramma, get a Creative Zen on sale at the Supermarket, and use any of the 20 other music stores out there...
Apple, iTunes, and the ipod- along with a mac in general are options... not interested? Don't use them.
Until iTunes is the ONLY music store and the ipod is the ONLY mp3player this type of crap means nothing but a stir on an internet forum. - Korvaras, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Boo ***** urns. Damn retarded I say.
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