Antitrust Suit Filed To Halt Apple 'Music Monopoly' 510
Dotnaught writes with word of an anti-trust lawsuit filed against Apple late last month. Information Week has the story, a suit charging the company with maintaining an illegal monopoly on the digital music market. "The complaint goes beyond software licensing politics and charges Apple with deliberately designing its iPod hardware to be incompatible with WMA. One of the third-party components in iPods, the Portal Player System-On-A-Chip, supports WMA, according to the complaint. 'Apple, however, deliberately designed the iPod's software so that it would only play a single protected digital format, Apple's FairPlay-modified AAC format,' the complaint states. 'Deliberately disabling a desirable feature of a computer product is known as crippling a product, and software that does this is known as crippleware.'"
Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Standard or proprietary (Score:5, Insightful)
You can macro these headlines (Score:5, Insightful)
Lather, rinse and repeat.
Can Apple use WMA without paying more? (Score:3, Insightful)
Where's the Ogg Vorbis support? I hear Microsoft specifies that player which can play protected WMA can not play Ogg Vorbis. Where's the lawsuit about that?
I must have been in a transporter accident... (Score:5, Insightful)
Scotty, for the love of God, get me out of here.
Plays MP3's just fine (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Spluh (Score:2, Insightful)
I hate propriety formats and limitations but now they want to FORCE companies to build in features or supporting a format - get bent.
Re:Standard or proprietary (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, you can sue them for anything... it doesn't mean you'll win though. In that case there might be some real merit, since MS has been convicted of antitrust actions with regard to their media player and music format.
Since when (Score:5, Insightful)
is playing WMA files considered a desirable feature in a portable music player?
OGG! (Score:4, Insightful)
Ridiculous defintion (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Plays MP3's just fine (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wow (Score:3, Insightful)
Not only that but even Microsoft doesn't support its original DRM with the Zune. WMA is 100% closed spec, while AAC+DRM is only closed spec for the DRMed portion, since AAC is an open spec (note open doesn't necessarily mean license free) owned by Dolby and it part of the MPEG4 specification.
This suit sounds like another money grab. The only winners are the lawyers.
Disabling? (Score:1, Insightful)
A monopoly is not magically illegal. (Score:5, Insightful)
iPods have been unable to play WMA since when there was only one iPod. The condition precedes any monopoly.
Microsoft is in fact in the marketplace and makes a very brown player that plays WMA just fine.
Stacie is perfectly free to buy one of those.
Next?
Re:Rubbish (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as the consumer is fully in control of whether to choose the product or its alternatives, there is no monopoly, regardless of how many units are sold. What makes something a monopoly is the lack of "close substitutes". Clearly, that is not the case for the iPod. You may not like the appearance of other players, but there are plenty of them out there, and they are at least reasonably close substitutes. People choose the iPod because either they believe it is the best choice or they think it is hip or they have had bad experiences with other companies' products or... lots of reasons, but the lack of reasonably usable alternatives is not one of them. iPods aren't even the cheapest players out there, so you can't even argue that Apple's volume makes it impossible to compete well....
The fundamental flaw with any argument based solely on number of units sold is that there is no real iPod lock-in. With operating systems, you are pretty much locked in. The cost of buying new software to support another OS is huge, plus there are all the compatibility problems with files, etc. With music, you have a choice. You can choose to buy music from the iTunes Store if you want, knowing full well that you will have to burn to a CD and have a little quality loss if you want to move to a non-Apple player, but you can also choose to buy DRM-free music on CD, from Amazon, or even some selections from the iTunes Store. I could switch to any other player right now if somebody came out with a better one. I'd have to spend a few hours converting my protected AACs to unprotected AACs (burning to a CD and ripping it), but I could do it. The barrier to switching is basically zero, and other alternatives exist. Thus, no monopoly. Simple as that.
Caveat: IANALBIPOOSD.
Just buy something else dummy (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe I should sue Ford because I can't get a General Motors engine in a Focus. Where is it written all products have to support every format? Doesn't Apple have the right sell what they want and don't forget by not supporting other formats Apple is taking the risk and losing some customers who want those other formats. GROW UP people vote with your dollars. If Apple was to start losing lots of sales because they only support their own format, they would flinch and open up.
So sick and tired of people wasting court time on whiny things like this instead of voicing their opinion with their dollars. All lawsuit like this do is increase the prices of products to offset the cost of legal departments to fight these frivolous lawsuit.
Re:I must have been in a transporter accident... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Spluh (Score:4, Insightful)
If your mp3 player doesn't load as a "mass storage device" and let you just swap the materials back and forth, then
YOU BOUGHT THE WRONG PLAYER.
End of story.
(Sorry about shouting, but the iPod people may not hear so well anymore.)
"Known as crippleware" (Score:3, Insightful)
Really?
I think that's what losers call it. I don't know that I've ever heard anyone who has known anything about computers EVER call anything crippleware.
Freaking morons. You hear about this stuff all the time, it's like the lawyers decide they can take whatever noun they want, add "-ware" to the end of it, and its some part of the technological subculture that they can use that other lawyers and judges won't have any clue that they just made it up. They'll just assume that it is part of the "technological subculture" that they don't know anything about, and, voila, we've got new terms.
Crippleware. Jesus. I don't know anyone in the industry making up nonsense like this. Do y'all?
Re:Spluh (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wow (Score:2, Insightful)
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Re:Spluh (Score:3, Insightful)
The posters problem isn't likely that he cannot place the files on his mp3 player, as would be the case if you took what he was saying literally. He likely can place the files on his player just fine, but can he play them? The problem our dear poster seemed to be getting at is that the only mp3 player that will play songs protected with Apple's DRM scheme is the iPod. He would likely only run into this problem if he had the "correct" music player (for the sake of this argument, it can be anything that isn't an iPod), that would load as a mass storage device, allowing him to place whatever he pleased on it. Then he might later discover that his fancy new music files from iTunes wouldn't play on it, since it has been fucked by DRM. So the correct response would be: "You bought the wrong music."
This isn't the simple case of buying a DVD player so you can watch DVD's. This is the case of "Buy our brand's DVD Player so you can listen to our brand of DVDs". This type of behavior makes me get stabby. (Sorry for not shouting)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
In order for this to be an issue at all, there needs to be a DRM scheme that is an open standard. Currently there isn't, so the lawsuit has exactly 0 legs to stand on. Apple decided to create their own DRM instead of licensing and implementing the DRM of a convicted monopolist who tends to randomly deprecate their old DRM products. The only thing Apple has a monopoly on is DRMed tracks on their music system. Apple sells DRM-free music, and DRM-free music from anywhere else can also be loaded on an iPod in a number of industry standard formats.
That said, I don't own an iPod as it doesn't have the feature set I want. I have no problems with Apple's iPod/iTS product offering though. It might be anticompetitive, but it isn't illegal and it definitely is not monopolistic. That'd be like saying Apple iMacs are monopolistic because they won't play DRM'd WMV files.
Re:Spluh (Score:5, Insightful)
YOU BOUGHT THE WRONG PLAYER.
Err... I bought an ipod precisely for the extra features, like smart playlist syncing, collecting play stats, being able to rate songs on the ipod itself, create multiple playlists with overlapping songs but only have one copy of the song on the disk, etc, etc.
All that pretty much requires the ipod style 'database'. I don't -want- to swap the materials back and forth manually. TYVM.
I -do- agree it sucks that music is sort of hidden on the ipod, and can't be played if its not in the ipod's database, and would welcome the ability to rebuild the ipod database on the fly as a feature addition. And there are other features I'd add too.
But between choosing manual song and folder management vs ipods way... I choose the ipod. No question.
Re:Spluh (Score:4, Insightful)
But you WOULD be forcing a company to ADD something.
You may want to note that the chip allows the real-time decoding of WMA. This is so that WMA doesn't need to rely on the software to do all of the decoding work (which in essense makes playback on an otherwise less capable CPU possible or cuts down the CPU cycles necessary thus conserving power use).
In order to take advantage of this capability, you need to write software that accesses it. Moreover, if you introduce support for that format, you'll need to support it long after you decide not to use a particular chipset and lose the extra advantages that it supplies.
Before you go around believing the nonsense you read in a frivolous lawsuit (that not supporting all the features of a chipset is tantamount to DISABLING said features)... you should stop and think whether it even makes logical sense.
Right? You're mixing up SOFTWARE with HARDWARE.
Re:Really (Score:5, Insightful)
WMA is a proprietary format also, with or without DRM. So, Apple not interested in paying royalties to Microsoft for WMA capability is monopolistic? Unless Microsoft is giving it away for free, that doesn't sound like a case. Why not sue Warner for monopolizing their own catalog? Or EMI?
Trolls
Re:Spluh (Score:5, Insightful)
And let's be fair. The iPod got huge by being useful to a hell of a lot of people, namely the vast majority that wants a round-edged managed experience. If the $20 player was useful to the masses, it would be #1 on the market. But, in cutting corners, they also tend to cut out things like english-language manuals, product testing, ergonomics, etc. You might not be able to drop a XviD onto your iPod, but download a video from iTMS, and you know it will work, period. Meanwhile, your XviD might or might not work on the off-brand player, even spending an hour with the conversion software.
There may be a technological solution... (Score:2, Insightful)
If they allow downloads in competitors' DRM formats - and honour licenses in these formats by supplying Apple-DRM'd (or DRM-free, if appropriate) versions of third-party licensed material free-of-charge - then they are not excluding any DRM vendor. Nor would they be penalising purchasers of iPods, who would be able to obtain an iPod version of a DRM-X file for free.
DRM exists to protect the rights of the copyright holder, not any third party. Apple would only need to support cross-licensing for media it is licensed to sell. If a DRM-X file is available DRM-free from iTunes due to a separately-negotiated licensing scheme with the publisher, then that's tough luck for the vendor of DRM-X: DRM-X will then serve only to lock the end-user to devices that support it, the very thing Apple is being accused of
Apple supporting third-party DRM in their hardware would signify a loss of ground in their professed ambition to remove DRM from the download scene.
Re:Spluh (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Spluh (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see the 360 supporting Wii software anytime soon, and I don't see how that's much different.
Re:Spluh (Score:5, Insightful)
So if I set up rythymbox, and have it sync to a 'mass storage player' like, say, a Sansa. I can set up a smart playlist that will rotate songs based on the songs 'star rating', 'play count', 'last played date', and 'skip count'?
-and- (and *this* is the important part)
When I go off and listen to my "mass storage player" for a few days, and plug it back into my rythymbox, all that play data will sync back into rythymbox, so that it can update the playlists based on:
a) what, when, and how often I listened or skipped a track *ON THE DEVICE*
b) any ratings adjustments I made to the song *ON THE DEVICE*
The last time I tried a non-ipod, the above features, which I now view as critical, were not even close to available. And according to the research I -did- do, these features -require- an itunes like 'database' because a lot of that meta information I base my smart playlists on is not stored in the actual songs.
Now, I'm sure a 'rythymbox' type program could create its own meta-data databse, while still letting me move songs around 'manually'... but unless the player itself updated that database of meta-information as I used it, there wouldn't actually be much point.
I'd welcome finding out I was wrong... but as far as I know, only the ipod can currently do this.
Re:Really (Score:5, Insightful)
I can buy EMI songs on iTunes right now and load and play it on a Zune. Apple obviously controls the hardware IT MAKES, but I don't see lock in anywhere
except with the DRM that the CEO of Apple is on record that he would like to get rid of. That is mandated in contracts with producers.
If Apple is a Monopoly with its DRM then all DRM is a monopoly. I would like to agree with this, but by definition, it isn't.
Re:Can Apple use WMA without paying more? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Spluh (Score:3, Insightful)
The iTunes database does this for me.
Dragging and dropping music doesn't scale either. What is a neat system on a 256MB device is a huge pain on a 60GB device, once you factor in ID3 tags, changes, etc. It also lacks the control with auto playlists based on how often I play or how high I rate the songs. These are solid features that make a real difference. To do it your way we'd have to manually update our playlists whenever we wanted to change them.
If you're doing the work of a file system, you bought the wrong metaphor!
I own an iPod and I've never used iTunes (Score:4, Insightful)
99% market share doesn't make an illegal monopoly - monopolies are only illegal when you abuse them and engage in non-competitive behavior.
Re:Spluh (Score:4, Insightful)
Only if I wanted that functionality.
Personally, I don't give a flying fsck that my iPod doesn't look like mass storage. It doesn't diminish my enjoyment of the product at all.
By all means, apply your own standards to your own purchases. But, allow us our own. I've been completely happy with my iPod -- if I want a USB stick, they currently cost about 30 bucks. If I really need to move a bunch of data, I have an entire USB hard drive I can carry around with me.
Having iTunes and an iPod doesn't preclude me from having my MP3's ripped on a FreeBSD box and managed on a UNIX file system shared by Samba into iTunes. Me, personally, I like the way iTunes works in terms of what it syncs and all that. Different people, different needs.
Cheers
Actively Disabling? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not only that, but iTunes will let you copy non-DRM'd
Furthermore, according to the GPP:
That's a funny complaint about Apple, considering the fact that any song that's ever been purchased from Apple's store is compatible with every iPod ever sold. Unlike the Microsoft side of things, where MS initially supported several different stores selling