Apple deliberately wiped rivals' music from iPods – iTunes court claim Apples software forced people to delete music from their iPods if it was downloaded from an iTunes store rival, a court has heard. During a class-action antitrust hearing in California on Thursday, lawyers argued that Apple purposely made its iTunes application instruct users to reset their iPods – removing any tracks obtained …
Actually you are both right and wrong, Apple had from the beginning not wanted DRM, but it was a demand from music labels to allow Apple to sell their music digitally.
It was more in-fact that SJ was able to convince the Music labels to lift of requirement. I had MP3's playing on my iPod that wasn't from iTunes Store. So I see no issue really here. All you had to do was to import your DRM free music into iTunes.
What Apple here did was controlling their own responsibility towards record labels, and the stakes in the original contract was high. If Apple could not show that they could prevent pirated songs to end up on their iPod they could have lost the privilege of providing music to it's customers.
So in essence Apple did not allow competing DRM systems into it's product as it could not have control over these. And it still doesn't, this is still valid today. It's just that we don't have so much DRM music, most is DRM free. And Apple has always allowed DRM free music to be synced to your iPod through iTunes. And it allowed only up to 5 iTunes equipped computers to sync to the same iPod. This all due to the piracy concerns from the music labels.
Then there was other MP3 player makers that hacked their way to work with iTunes by not correctly identify themselves through the USB protocol.
the issue here is actually that Real Networks reverse engineered the DRM so that they could make their DRM look-like Apple's and so be accepted by iTunes and iPods. Then, when Apple plugged the holes that they used to do this, any music in Real's DRM suddenly became invalid and so removed.
The lawsuit should be against Real for creating their DRM in a nefarious way and not just selling their track DRM-free like Amazon have been doing.
"they're commercial... but then so is 99% of music out there...."
Actually only 5% of music is commercial. The stuff that's worth listenning to. The rest can only be politely described as "experimental". That is to say, JJJ experiments on it's listeners to see if they can survive listening to it.
Apple, meanwhile, contended to the court that the move was not part of an intentional effort to lock iPod owners into the online iTunes music shop, but rather a security measure to keep hackers from tampering with anti-piracy measures. If unexpected files were found on the devices, the software would demand a factory reset. (Emphasis added)
Sure gives them a lot of wiggle room, doesn't it. That paragraph would have had to have been written by a gaggle of lawyer types, as no other humanoid form could have come up with a phrase that is true on its face, but under which all manner of corporate shenanigans can hide. I mean, form a Corporate standpoint, any audio file not obtained through the Walled Garden couldn't possibly be "expected" now could it?
"Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury: according to a survey of two hundred iPod devices in YOUR community carried out by our firm's agents, one hundred percent of them contained legally obtained files encoded in popular audio formats not purchased through plaintiff's service. Therefore, the presence of such files cannot in any way be called unexpected by any definition of the plaintiff. Further, the ability of the device to both store AND replay these files, with full functionality, shows clearly that the plaintiff did in fact EXPECT that users would place this type of file on said devices.
"Also, our agents have found that plaintiffs did offer Nickelback albums and songs for download through their music service. Can anyone willingly distributing these materials, possibly even to your children, be said to have a sense of ethics, morals, dignity, or judgement?"
I'm not sure if you where born back then, but no digital music existed without DRM and the music labels, blessing.
Apple was the first company to get music labels into selling music digitally, and it was not without compromises. If Apple would have failed with their DRM and been unable to show the music labels that they were able to keep their gadgets free from pirated music to a high extent, they would have lost the privilege of selling music digitally quite fast.
This paragraph should be read in that light.
"no digital music existed without DRM"
You mean apart from the music that had been on CD for the 20 or so years before iPods and iTunes existed, most of which wasn't DRMed* and could easily be ripped to an audio player, losslessly if required?
* DRM is not part of the audio CD standard, and attempts to DRM CDs involved creating them as CD ROMS rather than as true audio CDs - which made them unplayable on some real CD players.
Not true. Not wanting to be a pedant, but to clarify, back then, I was buying muisic in MP3 format from MP3.com and other sites now sadly defunct, that were standard, non-DRM'd MP3as (as you can't DRM MP3).
You are probably correct in that most *major* labels at that time hadn't yet started to allow the sale of MP3s of *major* artists but to say you couldn't legitimately buy any music in standard MP3 format, is very wrong.
When I realised that not only were files you bought from iTunes (way back then) were DRM encumbered, and that the actual file system was pissed around with to make it difficult to access your music without iTunes, that was the first and last Apple product I bought (and will buy).
Call me old fashioned but I like standard and open formats, using standard/open (ideally) protocols, that don't enforce when and how you access content that you own. I don't and won't put up with being controlled in this way, so Apple had me as a customer, that lasted the duration of one product (as it turns out, one pretty shitty iPod G3). Never again (this goes for Amazon with eBook also and anyone else of that mold).
I've had iPods and never had a problem loading files that didn't come from Apple's store as long as those files were transferred via iTunes. I never had problems adding MP3s to iTunes from a variety of sources and 'services'. I never had problems with rival/alternative formats translated via 3rd party tools so that they could be opened in iTunes and then placed onto the iPod. So then this case isn't about iPods wiping content not sourced from Apple but that iPods couldn't play files transferred directly from rival services - presumably because those files were encoded (encrypted really) using a rival DRM format, decoded by that software and placed (unsigned presumably) on the device. So aren't those other services culpable for choosing to encrypt their files in the first place such that only their own proprietary software was able to upload to the device? On what basis would a software manufacturer be allowed to sue because they aren't allowed to run their proprietary software when its specifically designed to reverse engineer someone else's proprietary hardware? Or even more simply - do hardware manufactures have to ensure they are compatible with what software companies provide or isn't the industry standard the other way around. It is also first and foremost a dedicated consumer device - one of many and many of which have proprietary interfaces. My car has a CPU should I be able to sue because it doesn't run android or Windows 8? Refrigerators need to be liberated as well. I'm pretty sure Apple enjoyed and protected its Monopolistic position with those updates and by wiping off third party data, but they were obligated to ensure their DRM was secure.Demonstrated ability to reverse engineer and then place other content on the device would compromise that. I think they had every right to do it and the device was flexible enough that content from ARTISTS could be consumed without barriers while providing compensation to those folks - the main purpose of the thing. The iPod didn't exist for RP to make money for hacking.
An mp3 file has no DRM. How the file gets onto the device shouldn't matter. It's a legal file using 'open' (as in understood) format that the iPod plays without issue. The only time any problem occurs is when a user hooks it up to iTunes after listening to their music without issue and is then lied to that they need to wipe their device.
How the file gets onto the iPod matters when whoever put it there manages to corrupt the iPod file system. As an example how to get it right, take Amazon: Anything you download from Amazon with their download tool will be moved to a folder named "Automatically Add to iTunes" somewhere in the iTunes folder by that download tool, and iTunes will automatically add these files to its library, and then it can be synced to half a dozen iPods or iPhones or iPads.
Anyway, an iPod was _never_ a safe place for your music. iPods are tiny devices that can break and that can get stolen. If someone put music onto their iPod, without having it stored elsewhere in a safe place, that's their own fault.
It's not so much corrupting the drive system per se, the problem is that what Real did circumvented the DRM thus circumventing the provenance of the music which at the time was a contractual requirement between Apple and the music vendors.
Would consumers have been better served had Apple and Real reached a mutual licensing agreement? Probably (on the order of 90% likely). Was Apple required to make such an agreement? I don't think so. And frankly I don't think this lawsuit addresses that question in anything resembling a sufficiently direct way to be valid. Real essentially engineered a malware vector to install their music on Apple's system. This case is claiming they were entitled to engineer the malware. It's too many of these shenanigans that got us to the DCMA here in the States.
Almost. At the time there was no communal DRM in the sense of the Blueray DRM. Each vendor produced their own and therefore inherently mutually exclusive DRM scheme. Real created a way to circumvent Apple's DRM and put their music onto the iPod. Real is asserting that because of Apple's monopoly position in the music player market, Apple had no right to keep them out, regardless of any contracts Apple might have had with music vendors. Which when put simply looks pretty damn silly and is why companies hire lawyers to confuse the issue.
Does this mean Jobs didn't use it as an excuse to viciously subdue competitors in the market space? No it doesn't. It means that because of other grants of monopolies (specifically IP rights to music), this vicious monopolistic behavior was perfectly legal. You can argue on moral/ethical grounds about whether or not that initial IP right ought to have been granted, but once the legal system accepts that such grants are legal, this is where you wind up.
This is dubious behaviour at best, but the title is nonsense (as are all titles I've read so far on the inevitably sensationalist reporting of the story).
Music loaded into iTunes would sync to an iPod just fine. You could buy (say) MP3s from anywhere you liked, load them into iTunes, sync and it'd work (within the normal iTunes/iPod values of "work"). Music sync'd to the iPod *BY SOME OTHER METHOD* would cause iTunes to barf.
The context is Apple's accusation that RealNetworks hacked the iPod by allowing unofficial iPod sync within the Real player, so that Real could directly sell and sync music over their own service instead of Apple (rather than selling over their own service, then throwing the files at iTunes for playback and sync - they had an overinflated opinion of their "brand" in RealPlayer, I suspect). Apple disagreed with the reverse engineered syncing, are calling it hacking and took steps to stop Real doing so. If iTunes found files on the iPod which it didn't put there itself, it would insist you reset the device.
You might very well argue that Real should've been allowed to do that (interoperability, monopoly breaking etc) and think it warranted an anti-trust suit. And lo, that's what's happening, and that's where the story comes from.
I haven't played with a recent iPod but during that era you could hook one up to your windows PC and see all the music files in a hidden folder with garbled filenames through windows explorer. So if copying files into a hidden folder which is standard computer operation for nearly half a century is "hacking" then the whole computing industry is based on hacking...
Well, anyone who had an iPod during those years knows full well you could put CD rips or DRM free downloads onto them without any problem.
But putting files saddled with third party DRM onto them from an iTunes rival onto them? Well, firstly it's almost certainly a violation of the license you bought that music under, but why would you even want to do it in the first place if you were buying from one of their obviously superior rivals?
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2008/04/drm-sucks-redux-microsoft-to-nuke-msn-music-drm-keys/
Oh yeah. That kind of shenanigans.
Still, totally sue Apple for it. They're obviously the ones to blame. Because Apple.
If you enable the new! improved! so much better than the last one! iCloud sync for photos, all photos synced from outside your iTunes library are wiped from your iPhone. These include photos synced VIA iTunes, but from other image files/folders on your computer. I imagine Apple is restricting content that can be iCloud stored to ONLY Apple-device created content. Silos, anyone?
iPhone 5s > iOS 8.1.1 Settings > iCloud > iCloud Photo Library (Beta): "Photos Synched from iTunes will be Removed - Synching photos via iTunes is not supported when iCloud Photo Library is turned on. - 43 photos will be removed. - Remove Photos [or] Cancel"
I had iPod from 2006, my first and last actually. I never had any issues with this, but I do remember the carousel of Real and others who tried to tap into Apples business, and that itself was a risk for Apple with the other music labels. As they had to convince them that their DRM model worked. Apple had no control over other business DRM models and therefore could not live up to their contract with music labels if they allowed alien syncing and others DRM music.
Apple has lots of money, that is the sole reason for these action suits.
I wouldn't say the only reason. Certainly a primary one. You might be able to argue that Apple had a monopoly position and as such owed consumers the equivalent of a browser choice.
The problem is, that's not the suite Real filed. And when they filed it, they skipped right past half and went full arsed.
Looking at the emails you can see that Apple were making up cover stories (is lies) for blatant anti a competitive practice. How anybody can defend this is beyond me. However it's likely the courts will probably find in favour of Apple and their money. This is the US legal system we're talking about.
To all the Apple haters out there . . . SERIOUSLY?
How many stores, banks, government buildings have been hacked into trying to steal CC or Debit
card numbers? And you don't think a smart hacker would attempt to hijackApple information to sell
a competitor?
Hacking is a very real threat, and even if the above type of hacker does not get through, do you really want one to ride in from piggyback from outside the iTunes store with a virus or malware on its back that could potential destroy the software in your expensive phone?
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