“An antitrust lawsuit filed against Apple on Dec. 31 charges the company with maintaining an illegal monopoly on the digital music market,” Thomas Claburn reports for InformationWeek.
“Plaintiff Stacie Somers, represented by attorneys Craig Briskin and Steven Skalet of Mehri & Skalet PLLC, Alreen Haeggquist of Haeggquist Law Group, and Helen Zeldes, alleges that Apple dominates the market for online video, online music, and digital music players and that its dominance constitutes a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The attorneys are seeking to have their lawsuit certified as a class action,” Claburn reports.
“The complaint against Apple claims that the company controls 75% of the online video market, 83% of the online music market, more than 90% of the hard-drive based music player market, and 70% of the Flash-based music player market,” Claburn reports.
“The complaint takes issue with Apple’s refusal to support [Microsoft’s] Windows Media Audio format.’Apple’s iPod is alone among mass-market Digital Music Players in not supporting the WMA format,’ it states, noting that America Online, Wal-Mart, Napster, MusicMatch, Best Buy, Yahoo Music, FYE Download Zone, and Virgin Digital all support WMA files,” Claburn reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: A monopoly, which this isn’t anyway, is legal. It’s monopoly abuse that’s illegal. Where’s the abuse? iPods also play MP3, WAV, AIFF, among other formats. Where’s the exclusion? What is Apple supposed to do, support every also-ran, failed format in the world?
So having a better product is illegal? Wow thats new.
MPEG-4 ACC is an industry standard, err WMA is, well, err one company’s attempt to own the distribution format.
Frivolous!
Its actually the problem of the other players not supporting AAC (which is open to them to support) not that Apple doesn’t support WMA (which isn’t that great anyway).
I thought iTunes supported non-DRM WMA files. Am I wrong about this? And isn’t it true that Microsoft does not allow DRM files to play in iTunes?
These people need to move to China or Russia for a year to how bad it could be. Then maybee they will shut the F up.
Just how stupid can these lawyers be?
…to see how….
….maybe…
Darn MDM and no editing.
Paraphrasing Jack Nicholson’s character Colonel Nathan Jessep in “A Few Good Men”: “Who the fsck is Plaintiff Stacie Somers?”
Been wonder what Zune Tang was up too…….
Apple should countersue naming Microsoft as a defendant for not allowing Windows Media to work on Macs
“The complaint against Apple claims that the company controls 75% of the online video market, 83% of the online music market, more than 90% of the hard-drive based music player market, and 70% of the Flash-based music player market…
Controlling this large amount of market share was rightfully earned. By customers liking the product and buying in droves. Nobody forced them.
“The complaint takes issue with Apple’s refusal to support [Microsoft’s] Windows Media Audio format.’Apple’s iPod is alone among mass-market Digital Music Players in not supporting the WMA format,’ it states, noting that America Online, Wal-Mart, Napster, MusicMatch, Best Buy, Yahoo Music, FYE Download Zone, and Virgin Digital all support WMA files,” Claburn reports.
Mirroring MDN comment, what about supporting MP3? Sadly this is ignored by these “going out of the music buisness companies.”
Apple has every right to refuse to support a competitors file format, and having to pay royalties/fee’s to use it.
Just becuase some companies choose a inferior format doesn’t mean Apple or us have to accept it.
Lol! Total ridiculous lawsuit. Someone always trying to make money
without researching the truth first. The lawyers always get rich on these things so obviously they take them on.
Not only do Ipods also play MP3’s but Windows machine owners can get a free copy of iTunes, install it on their Windows only machine and play music and videos meant for iPods.
As Mac Daily News says:
Where is the abuse?
Ken
…to be dismissed soon at a theater near you
Gee… I wonder who is behind that lawsuit. Could it be Microsoft? Nah, I must be dreaming.
This if course all has to do with copy protection.
Copy protection is hardware based, going with a Microsoft format will require eventual hardware requirements of Apple, and a early notice of upcoming products to comply with the new copy protection schemes.
So Apple will be telling Microsoft, a hardware competitior, about future hardware products.
No way, no how.
The highly overrated Steve Jobs has become a very big target – lawyers love it but what about investors holding AAPL? When do they begin to worry – not necessiarly about the reality but about the buzz?
Buzz drives Wall Street far more than quarterly numbers that blow away predictions and far more than the announcement of some new gadget.
As long as there are other services and devices that play WMA files, there’s no monopoly or abuse. Everyone has the right to choose the device that places the media they want to hear.
Their argument would be like trying to say that all DVD players must also support HD-DVD, Blu-Ray and mini-Discs.
Uhh… Wouldn’t Apple have to license the proprietary WMA format from somebody?
You could play WMA format if you wanted… But why?
WMA is proprietary(like a monopoly would have), Apple is using an open standard that they didn’t develop(aac). I can’t imagine Apple losing to something like this.
“The complaint takes issue with Apple’s refusal to support [Microsoft’s] Windows Media Audio format.’Apple’s iPod is alone among mass-market Digital Music Players in not supporting the WMA format,’ it states, noting that America Online, Wal-Mart, Napster, MusicMatch, Best Buy, Yahoo Music, FYE Download Zone, and Virgin Digital all support WMA files,” .
The way I read that argument is that because Apple doesn’t support one format developed by a company with a monopolistic record (suspending for a moment knowledge that Apple’s products support multiple nonproprietary formats) it is a monopoly. That logic is about as eff’d up as a football bat.
>MDN wrote: Where is the abuse?
The abuse stems from the fact that you have to buy an iPod if you want to take your iTMS-bought purchases with you. That’s the lock.
The unreasonable say you can burn the songs to CD and re-rip them into a format of your choice. However, that jailbreak method doesn’t make sense if you’ve bought hundreds – or worse, thousands – of tracks from iTMS.
Ummmmm, go to Amazon and buy your music there. Then sync it to your iPod.
Buy your CDs where ever and RIP it to iTunes and sync.
Don’t like Apple’s products, who held a gun to your head and made you buy them?
After being treated like a third class citizen for years by Microsoft, all i can say is, suck it WMP fans.
It takes a lot of money to launch a case like this. Who’s paying, I wonder?
God Bless America. The only place where buckets of time and money are spent in pointless pursuits while people sit and watch their neighbors freeze, sweat, or starve to death.