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Antitrust Suit Filed To Halt Apple 'Music Monopoly'
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Jan 03, 2008 05:03 PM
from the a-bit-too-popular dept.
from the a-bit-too-popular dept.
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.'"
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Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Funny)
Yup. The solution to Apple being accused of being a monopolist is to have them license DRM from a convicted monopolist. Seems simple enough.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Funny)
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:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
It also has a USB interface. But the first two generations of iPod don't.
The PP5002c can decode video. But no iPods until the fifth generation did so.
The PP5002c also had lots of other logic in it that wasn't used by Apple. I can't possibly see how this is supposed to be an argument that Apple was supposed to support WMA.
Another harassment suit. I hope it gets kicked out of court quickly.
"Imaginary Property" (Score:5, Interesting)
As said by other, iPod's chip would have the technical capability to play WMA.
BUT then Apple doesn't necessarily have the needed license to implement support for MS's IP.
That, specially from the point of view that, Microsoft's agreement in the "PlaysForSure" certification campaign forbids the player to support other formats except MP3 and WMA. (Which also eplains while in europe one can find a lot of devices playing OGG/Vorbis but not in the US where the device aren't allowed) And in addition PlaysForSure mendate an obscure and stupid protocol (a microsoftish hack around the Picture-Transfer-Protocole) for communicating with the device, whereas the iPod use plain simple mass storage and can work as an external hard disk too (except that the music is stored in an invisible folder).
This, had Apple decided to implement WMA (by simply turning on a function already available into hardware) they would have been forced to remove support for other formats namely the AAC around which their iTunes store is based, and switching away to a protocol that made the iPod a popular data-transport device.
Besides failing to support WMA doesn't make a monopoly. If we take into account all the compressed music file that circulated everywhere (on the net, on peer-2-peer networks, on embed device for various tasks including ringtones, etc)
MP3 is by far the most widespread standart.
AAC (iPod), WMA (Zune+PlaysForSure), ATRAC (Sony), Real Audio (Early webcasting), etc... all represent a tiny fraction next to the omnipresence of MPEG Layer III (and its ancestors).
And if people are complaining that the install base of linux is too low to be worth considering, I can't see why then people complain about some format that only represents a microscopic fraction of the market and is completely over shadowed by MP3.
All the others are only specific formats that are exclusively used between some proprietary music stores and corresponding audio players, and thus only exist in specific scenarios. The GSM codec (used in cell phones) is maybe the closest thing that comes in term of frequency of occurrence.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
Worse than that, "support" for WMA in a portable player chipset doesn't generally mean the hardware can decode it by itself. It means that the hardware has enough memory and enough DSP horsepower to decode it when combined with an appropriate software codec. This is a case of licensing or not licensing the WMA codec, not just the crypto. It would almost certainly have cost Apple money on every iPod to support even the unencrypted WMA. This isn't something you get for free just by using a particular piece of hardware....
I would also hardly call WMA support "highly desirable". Among Microsoft employees who have portable music players, the iPod market share is reportedly 80%. If it were so desirable, don't you think at least Microsoft employees would favor Zunes because they support WMA? I think we can safely establish that at least as far as consumers are concerned, WMA support is not desirable. As far as consumers are concerned, a WMA file, an MP3 file, and an AAC file are all the same thing as an AIFF file. Most consumers just don't care. Expecting a hardware vendor to pay extra money on every unit for a feature that few users care about is silly, and I can't imagine how much crack their lawyers must have been smoking when they took on such a frivolous case.
If they were doing something useful like suing for the right to sell FairPlay songs, that would at least make sense, but suing because Apple didn't pay to license the WMA codec is about the most asinine lawsuit I've ever heard of. This makes the SCO lawsuits seem positively sensible by comparison....
Re:Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, if I recall correctly, the PP5002c and PP5003 were simply dual ARM7 TDMIO chips with some glue and interface logic. There's nothing there that would play WMA.
This case is baseless, groundless, and sure to get paid to go away.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
Audio formats supported: AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), Protected AAC (from iTunes Store), MP3 (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 2, 3, and 4), Apple Lossless, WAV, and AIFF
Only one of the 7 formats is DRM'ed (ie. "locked"), and only 2 have any sort of Apple proprietary nature to them (Apple Lossless and the FairPlay DRM'ed AAC). They shouldn't be forced to adopt a competitor's DRM. And Amazon proved you can create an online service compatible with the iPod.
In short, they'll get thrown out of court.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Funny)
Clearly you weren't around during the Jon Katz era.
Apple's response... (Score:5, Funny)
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?
they just aren't paying attention, are they? (Score:5, Interesting)
If they really want to solve the incompatibility problem, they should go out and sue HD-DVD and Blu-Ray device makers for not making players that can read both formats. Or how about a video game maker that only makes his games on PS2 and not on XBox or WII? or the other end, how about suing Microsoft for not being able to play Sony PS2 games...
I must have been in a transporter accident... (Score:5, Insightful)
Scotty, for the love of God, get me out of here.
Re:I must have been in a transporter accident... (Score:4, Insightful)
Plays MP3's just fine (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Plays MP3's just fine (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Plays MP3's just fine (Score:4, Informative)
Since when (Score:5, Insightful)
is playing WMA files considered a desirable feature in a portable music player?
OGG! (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't like apple, suit still retarded (Score:4, Informative)
even though the ipod is a retarded crippled heap of junk and itunes DRM is evil, there's nothing forcing you to buy it, there's plenty of other choices out there.
add to this the fact they are expecting apple to pay a license fee to put WMA on the ipod, and you get the picture of the suit bringers idiocy.
I think this stems from one of these morons who files nucance suits thinking itunes is some kind of defato standard.
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:This is /. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Spluh (Score:5, Interesting)
Where do these people get this stuff?
Shipping a product without support for a desirable format? WTF? This is the whole reason we have the choice to buy hundreds of other brands of mp3 players that support both wma and ogg and mp3 as well as iTunes. I see no monopoly here.
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.)
Re:Spluh (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, because every time I turn on my device I really want to wait while it scans the ID3 information from 40 GB of MP3 files before it can display a menu of available tracks... that kind of logic worked great in the days of 128 MB flash players, but doesn't keep up with current tech very well...
Re:Spluh (Score:5, Funny)
I've been doing this for ages with 25 GB of music on my iPod, and just use Amarok to generate playlists (plain M3U), and Perl scripts to adjust them accordingly.
That sounds so much easier than just dragging my mp3's into iTunes and, well, being done.
Oh wait, no it doesn't.
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: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: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
Re:Spluh (Score:5, Interesting)
But the $20 mp3 player from a chinese manufacturer I've never heard of before or after... well, that can play almost everything. Drop files into the drive and it'll play them. Same holds true for DVD players and video formats.
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 $20 player was useful to the masses, it would be #1 on the market. But, in cutting corners, they also tend to cut out things like english-language manuals, product testing, ergonomics, etc. You might not be able to drop a XviD onto your iPod, but download a video from iTMS, and you know it will work, period. Meanwhile, your XviD might or might not work on the off-brand player, even spending an hour with the conversion software.
Re:Spluh (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Spluh (Score:4, Insightful)
But you WOULD be forcing a company to ADD something.
You may want to note that the chip allows the real-time decoding of WMA. This is so that WMA doesn't need to rely on the software to do all of the decoding work (which in essense makes playback on an otherwise less capable CPU possible or cuts down the CPU cycles necessary thus conserving power use).
In order to take advantage of this capability, you need to write software that accesses it. Moreover, if you introduce support for that format, you'll need to support it long after you decide not to use a particular chipset and lose the extra advantages that it supplies.
Before you go around believing the nonsense you read in a frivolous lawsuit (that not supporting all the features of a chipset is tantamount to DISABLING said features)... you should stop and think whether it even makes logical sense.
Right? You're mixing up SOFTWARE with HARDWARE.
Re:Spluh (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see the 360 supporting Wii software anytime soon, and I don't see how that's much different.
Re:Spluh (Score:4, Informative)
I second.
What I find most staggering in the "discussion", that people dumbly say that "iPod's chip allows WMA decoding". That's *LAMEST* thing of century to say.
For Apple to be able to include WMA support into iTunes/iPod, they would have to (1) fork some money to M$ and (2) sign restrictive licensing agreements.
Have you noticed that WMA players rarely support anything but WMA and MP3? Right, only few companies (e.g. Sony for their Walkmans) managed to secure deal which allows them to support other audio formats. Semi-official info I had about SanDisk's Sansa and Philips's GoGear players is that they can *NOT* support MP4 nor OGG/Vorbis because licensing agreement with M$ prevents them to.
In all the heated IP discussion, everybody forgets that technical side of story != legal side of story. Apple cannot support WMA w/o M$ blessing.
On other side, I fully support Apple's brave decision to support standard audio format - and *NOT* invent/buy another proprietary format. On ironic side, one can always respond to dumb question "Apple doesn't support M$ audio format" with "But it does!! MPEG4 audio was developed in greater part by M$!!"
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.
Re:licence fees (Score:4, Informative)
The article.
That's uh, what it's about:
"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.' "
Some side notes:
1. This was known: http://dotnet.org.za/matt/archive/2004/02/20/460.aspx [dotnet.org.za]
2. The wma format itself is a non issue if you use the included iTunes software that ships with every ipod: http://www.apple.com/itunes/jukebox/importing.html [apple.com]
Quote "iTunes also converts unprotected WMA files to AAC."
3. If you have the rights to play it on your PC then you can convert wma files to your ipod without quality loss since it uses lossless conversion.
4. Apple created and supports a free program specifically designed to allow you to convert from wma as well as asf, wmv, wav, and ogg for the ipod: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/audio/easywma.html [apple.com]
It looks to me like they just didn't want to pay to license a format that, by the complaints own addmission, isn't popular enough to hold on to 20% of the online music sales and is likely to be going down since the article even points out that DRM free Mp3 download services are gaining ground.
The second part of the monopoly isue is going to take some proving since the apple ceo posted this on the apple website:
Feb 6 2007
"Today's most popular iPod holds 1000 songs, and research tells us that the average iPod is nearly full. This means that only 22 out of 1000 songs, or under 3% of the music on the average iPod, is purchased from the iTunes store and protected with a DRM. The remaining 97% of the music is unprotected and playable on any player that can play the open formats. It's hard to believe that just 3% of the music on the average iPod is enough to lock users into buying only iPods in the future. And since 97% of the music on the average iPod was not purchased from the iTunes store, iPod users are clearly not locked into the iTunes store to acquire their music."
Since the ipod is left with 97% open format playback it's just a matter of deduction to see that the other cheaper players do support these open formats and some include protected wma (Zune) and could be easily puchased instead to use protected wma files directly if the consumer wanted. Free market and all that. If the feature was so desired then the players that support it would have more that a piddling share of the sales of music players.
Last note: Napster, Musicmatch, Walmart, Best Buy and Yahoo all adopted the protected WMA music format even though apple is supposed to have a monopoly on the online music industry, interesting. I would have thought that to sell more music they would have licensed formats that easily played back on the most popular music device, the ipod. You know, to make money.
!apple_records (Score:4, Funny)
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:Really (Score:5, Informative)
Is that what the plaintiffs are asking as a remedy?
I think perhaps it's more about why there are no 3rd party iTunes stores?
Apple may have a better product than Microsoft but I'd be interested to know how the Sheman Antitrust Act [stolaf.edu] applies differently to Apple than it did in The US vs Microsoft antitrust case [wikipedia.org] when Microsoft excluded Netscape from its desktop. The question in law is how is Apple controlling the hardware and the content different from say Standard Oil controlling the product and the distribution system (i.e. the railroad). My guess is that this is not a trivial suit. A lot of people with ipods resent having itunes as their only option. I think that's what this suit is about. And no matter how you feel about Apple's right to exercise such control, the law on the matter may be entirely different.
Re:Really (Score:5, Funny)
They're called 'buy the CD and do it yourself'. There's probably a store in your town!
Re:Really (Score:5, Informative)
The general music catalogs are available from other sources. It's not like iTunes/iPod prevents people from listening to music in other ways.
If you really examine the issue, WMA with DRM is the odd duck here, not iPod/iTunes.
So, what's the issue again? In a nutshell, iPod/iTunes is a relatively flexible platform on either Macs or PCs.
The IE-Microsoft-Netscape issue was about bundling IE into the operating system as an "inseparable" component. That along with a hundred other abuses surrounding Java, QuickTime, Real Media, bullying vendors, exclusive contracts etc. led to the conclusion that Microsoft was a treacherous monopolist.
Re:Really (Score:4, Informative)
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.