“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?
Apple isn’t holding a gun to anyone’s head to buy the iPod. People just buy it because it’s cool and it works. Oh yeah, and they didn’t make a version in turd brown.
Don’t know what’s worse these days…Anti Trust Laywers or Zune Tang.
Mac users had (and have) a legit beef, because of Windoze Media and it’s non-support of Mac users.
Any PeeCee weenie that wants to can install QuickTime for Windoze and have the same access as any Mac user.
As to LINUX users, who really cares?
“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.”
so I can’t actually convert my iTunes content to any other format, and use that in whatever non-iPod that I might happen to have?
Sure, it’s a bit inconvenient; that doesn’t make your argument valid.
Sorry.
“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.”
1) It’s not like the process of conversion was a big, dark secret.
2) Automator.
3) You should have thought of that before you spent perfectly good money on that Zune.
Congrats steveH for the intelligent and respectful reply. Even though we disagree, it’s nice to know there are others on this board who don’t have to resort to name-calling or insult when counter-arguing another’s posts.
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You wrote:
>>>1) It’s not like the process of conversion was a big, dark secret.
Not a secret, but with the success of iTMS (which Apple earned), an imbalance of power was created that allows Apple to demand unreasonable terms from record companies. To control consumer choice, its DRM requires the use of an iPod or iPhone. The alternate choices are the extreme hassle burn-to-CD-then-rip jailbreak method or trash iTMS purchases. Of course, this limits consumer choice to Apple media players.
>>>2) Automator.
How does Automator jailbreak Apple’s DRM’d iTMS songs?
>>>3) You should have thought of that before you spent perfectly good money on that Zune.
I’ve owned maybe 7 iPods now plus an iPhone. I’m not planning on ditching my Apple products until they break or something much better comes along. If that product comes from Apple, great. If it comes from Microsoft, just as great. The Zunes do look pretty good in their second iteration… not good enough for me to sell what I’ve got and spend for yet another player, but still pretty good.
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Apple is by far the leader in content online distribution. They make huge sums of money by selling songs online and selling the hardware the songs play on.
Here’s the problem:
– They use this leverage to limit consumer choice. Want to buy something other than an iPod, kiss your iTMS purchases goodbye, or spend a ridiculous amount of time and money jailbreaking your purchases so you can regain some fair use of them.
– They use this leverage to bully content producers into selling to Apple on its own terms (pricing, packaging, distribution). You don’t have to be a monopoly to engage in monopolistic practices. Microsoft is a great example, in that there are alternatives to everything it makes, from operating systems to office suites. However, it used/uses its market dominance in a way that damages competition and limits fair trade.
Apple engages in such anti-competitive and choice-limiting tactics.
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Anyway… thanks for the input steveH. Have a great day!
No, MS wouldn’t be behind this. There’s no way they’d want to establish any precedents on monopoly like this.
A suit like this is only expensive if you count the lawyer time. But lawyers like this are BEHIND the case. They need a plantiff, but they’re doing it on contingency hoping for a jackpot payday. Other than that their only costs are paper and the PR firm to make sure everyone hears about it (in order to try to pressure Apple to settle….)
mpc guy _you concluded, ‘Apple engages in such anti-competitive and choice-limiting tactics.’ I say what business out there would try and be all things to all people. Maybe, you feel what consumers need is a corporate benefactor ..someone who’ll be there to fund the consumers every turn and whim with support for all formats and/or all DRM and for each player on the market ..those that were and those that will be ..and all desired bitrates …etcetera upon etcetera. What provider has ever been all things to all people, ever. People make choices ..every day. I own music on vinyl, cassette, cd, digital and each one came with its own limitations and each required a choice …and if I’m not mistaken the DRM from online services was required of the seller by the RIAA. Every company, public or private wants to be successful and Apple is successful on their own merits but leveraging their success to limit consumer choice is a fantasy. Their products are attractive to consumers and the consumer makes a choice to use them. You know, this is really, really simple. If the consumer wants to use different players then the consumer makes a choice not to purchase digital music with DRM ..buy a cd ..rip nonDRM music with whatever import software you choose. You already know your iPod supports several formats. You also said, ‘Here’s the problem: ..” well, here’s what I say, ‘there is no problem except the one you’ve made up in your head.”
>anti-matter wrote: Maybe, you feel what consumers need is a corporate benefactor…there is no problem except the one you’ve made up in your head.”
I’ll admit… couldn’t make sense of your post… so I quoted the first and last parts of it.
You accuse me of making up things in my head in your last sentence, but make up something you think I would say in your first. You literally made it up, as I said no such thing.
How should one respond to someone who just makes things up?
Where to begin?
Sue Microsuck for not developing Vista for the Mac!
Beat the Lawyers with ipod filled pillow cases full of I Tunes songs.
Tower records has thankfully gone away for charging damn near $20.00 for a CD when the consumer only wanted one song.
Apple is popular because they make what we want to buy and do it well.
Jealousy and envy make people like Stacie do funny things!
Happy New Year to all Apple Fanboys, APPL investors, and
those of us that are FORCED to use ipods, iphones, etc. and the
damn fine Itunes, with the most amazing collection of music available.
@ free,
Good to see that you attempted to grow part of a braincell. What was your old nick? @84? Karma?
Contact me when you get out of your parents house. You sound like you need a lesson of living in the real world.
And I am serious, contact me.
I believe the mention of Automator was simply to say you can quickly set up something in automator that will burn a playlist to CD, then reimport as MP3 or AAC or whatever and then eject it wait for a new CD and then go to the next playlist. Heck, it can probably even create Smart playlists for you.
this lawsuit is ridiculous – the only winner will be the lawyers. that and tech people who can point and laugh. BTW, why didn’t anyone sue MS when Zune didn’t support MS own PlaysforSure Format. that sounds more legitimate.
oh and if you don’t want iTunes go to Amazon or Napster (now DRM-free mp3) or other non-DRM download sites. or download drm-free from iTunes. I get songs from Amazon – if I can save 10 cents a song – why not – I am not an audiophile.