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Information Technology News Apple iPod/iTunes class action changes venue
Information Technology News Apple iPod/iTunes class action changes venue | Apple iPod/iTunes class action changes venue |
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| by Stephen Withers | |
| Friday, 09 November 2007 | |
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The central claim seems to be that Apple was able to maintain "inflated pricing" for iPods and purchases from the iTunes Store by "preventing or excluding competition in the portable digital media player market". The trouble with the suit is that Apple never claimed the iPod could play files protected by DRM systems other than its own, or that music and videos purchased from the iTunes Store could be used on anything other than an iPod or iTunes software running on a Mac or a Windows PC. (More recently, Apple has begun selling DRM-free music that can be used with any AAC-compatible player, but the range has so far been limited by the music companies.) So you might say blaming Apple for the iPod's inability to play DRM-protected media from other sources is rather like complaining that you can't play an Xbox 360 game in a Playstation 3, or a VHS tape in a DVD player. But there's more too it than that. The class action suit also asserts that the PortalPlayer and Sigmatel chips used in various iPod models are capable of playing WMA files, but Apple "takes the extra step of disabling the iPod's PortalPlayer and Sigmatel chips from operating any DRM system other than [Apple's] proprietary Fairplay [sic] system." If that's true, and Apple actively designed out WMA compatibility from the iPod rather than merely failing to include it, Black's case might actually give the court something to think about. On the other hand, even if the chips came with the ability to play WMA files, would Apple also have needed a licence from Microsoft to make use of it? But when all's said and done, does it really make any more sense to say that Apple shouldn't make products that are incompatible with Microsoft's than to insist that Microsoft's products must be compatible with Apple's? Looking at Apple's huge share of the mobile player and online music markets, it seems to me that customers have voted with their dollars and picked iPods and FairPlay over WMA and a host of other players. The difference is that Apple has shown a marked reluctance to licence FairPlay to anybody other than Motorola (for the iTunes-compatible ROKR mobile phone). Still, Black would probably have got more public support (most of the comments I've read about his case have been derogatory) if he'd sued the big music companies for insisting on DRM in the first place.
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