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Apple Sued Over iTunes

By Ed Oswald, BetaNews

January 6, 2005, 3:00 AM

A California man is hoping to open up iTunes to work with more devices than just Apple's iPod by suing the company, court documents have shown.

The suit claims that Apple broke antitrust laws by freezing out competitors and forcing consumers to buy an iPod if they wish to make the music purchased portable.

Apple uses proprietary technology to ensure that its songs only play through the iTunes software or on an Apple portable music device.

Thomas Slattery, the plaintiff in the suit, is hoping for unspecified damages for being "forced" to buy the unit.

"Apple has unlawfully bundled, tied, and/or leveraged its monopoly in the market for the sale of legal online digital music recordings to thwart competition in the separate market for portable hard drive digital music players, and vice-versa," the suit alleges.

A spokesperson for Apple has declined to comment on the suit.

Add a Comment (12 Comments)

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By justinrobbins

edited Jan 6, 2005 - 4:46 PM

QUIT YOUR JIBBERJABBER.

Score: 0

By vipercorp

posted Jan 7, 2005 - 3:48 AM

You know, talking about playing Monopoly, look at Microsoft.

Any how, there's all kinds of cool products and software out there. There's other music stores, out there. Use them and be quite.

The IPOD isn't a MP3 player, at heart. ITunes is designed for MP4 / AAC formatted music, which is of much higher quality. Plus, the music is designed to have "security" built in. So, you can't just copy the music file onto your website and let people illegally download it.

You guys are missing the whole picture. I'm not this big Apple advocate or something, but they have created alot of incredible software and hardware, throughout the years. I can also say that about Microsoft (well the purchased alot of cool technolgy), IBM, Borland, Oracle, etc.. and the list goes on. I'm open to all technology.

I understand the arguement, "I payed for the music and I should be able to do whatever with it". There are always ways around stuff. Burn the music to CD and import the CD into WMP or WinAMP. Now you have WMA or MP3 files.

WMA and WMV are proprietory Microsoft formats, hum.... and you need to use the divx player to play .divx files (proprietory).

Pick on the big companies, to simply make money. I bet if Apple said, we'll support other third party MP3 players (export option or whatever) if you drop your suit, I bet the answer would be no. He simply wants money.

Actually, I forget who makes it, but there is another player on the market which is suppose to play ITunes stuff, so that would destroy the little monoply theory. It was one of the really big names, I forget now....

You guys probably think I have a bad attitude, but I don't. I'd like an export option myself. But, like I said, you just broke the copyright protection technology, the Music industry insists on.

Score: 0

By yohimbe9

posted Jan 6, 2005 - 11:24 AM

Most everything Apple does is monopolistic, iPod and iTunes included. The reason behind it is that Apple thinks their software is the best (and very often I would agree with them, too). The reason no one called them on it before was because for the longest time you had your PC users on one side buying from Dell, HP, Gateway, BestBuy etc, and your Mac users on the other buying from Apple. The Mac users were content with what Steve told and gave them (and once again, what he told and gave them was more often than not the best) and the PC users for the most part didn't event know that the Mac users existed. Now that Apple is working its way into the PC market with software and hardware devices it is going to find that its going up against people that don't have the typical Mac philosophy.

Score: 0

By maschino

posted Jan 6, 2005 - 10:07 AM

I don't see what all the fuss is about, iTunes runs fine without an iPod, and you can take the music on the go without it. First you could burn it a CD, and I suppose if you wanted rip the CD back to mp3 to use on another player you could take that step too. There are also other tools to get around it too. It sounds like he's just lazy and expects all technology to do everything for him, ahh, if only the world was perfect...

Score: 0

By se7en11

posted Jan 6, 2005 - 9:22 AM

Two reasons why this is just stupid:

1) The iPod is not the only MP3 player and iTunes is not the only music organizer/music store. There are plenty other ones out there.

2) Making Apple products only work with other Apple products...hmmm... Havn't they been doing this for years?

Just my humble opinion.

- john

Score: 0

By linkdup

posted Jan 6, 2005 - 9:10 AM

I think what Thomas is doing is a damn good thing. Apples business model and I guess work ethic in general is 100 times worse than Microsoft.

Score: 0

By YukonJack

posted Jan 6, 2005 - 10:01 AM

I agree ... iTunes is useless without an iPod. To many steps to convert their music to a format which is compatible with other mp3 players. It would be nice if they would offer another export option then iPod ... WMA would be a great start. I'm just glad i did fall victim to Apple and buy a iPod. Other MP3 players are more open and don't lock you into buying everything from one company.

Score: 0

By DJOmegaRush

posted Jan 7, 2005 - 8:32 PM

This is the answer. Works great. Alot easier than burning mpeg4 to CD and back to mp3. This will rip the encryption from the song and leave just the aac info. From there you can just right click on all your aac files and tell it to convert to mp3. ALOT EASIER.
http://www.hymn-project....//iOpener-0.2-setup.zip

Score: 0

By MrUp

posted Jan 6, 2005 - 12:17 PM

I've made serveral iTunes purchases and have had no problem getting the songs onto my mp3 CDs... listenting to one now, actually. Maybe Thomas would like iTunes itself to burn to CD? Wait, it does that... oh, he wants iTunes to support all the flavors of mp3 devices like MUSICMATCH does? Next, someone will sue MUSICMATCH for not supporting *.m4p files.

Score: 0

By linkdup

posted Jan 6, 2005 - 7:57 PM

The people that are defending Apple on this one are either:

a: Hardheaded "old school" mac users and are too close minded to think past their pretty mac.

b: Completely ignorant about everything life has to offer in it's entirety.

Wake up people. What if I want to buy and use a different vendors "mp3" player (lets not forget why they are called mp3 players btw). iTunes is pretty cool... ok I want to buy a song I like... purchased... wait, are you telling me I can't even transfer the song I just "bought" to my mp3 device? I bought that song. Ok, so I give in and buy there crappy iPod and I copied a song to it and I drive to work... wait I have to listen to it on my iPod because it won't let me copy that same song to my harddrive. Yes that's right ladies and gentlemen it's a one way road. Dangit, why isn't this transfering via USB. Oh it's because some A-hole designed the USB side of things for the iPod and it works like schidt. But that's entirely different story. Ok NOW I'm sick of this thing... gimme back my DELL mp3 player.

Ok so I'm just trying to paint a picture. I own an iPod and the thing pisses me off... APPLE pisses me off. The one thing that it does really really well is play mp3's. That... is... it.

Score: 0

By vipercorp

posted Jan 7, 2005 - 4:04 AM

You're wrong. You're just one of those Apple bashers, who don't know anything about the technology they've created over the years. You live in that there's nothing but Microsoft or Linux world. Closing your mind is wrong and you only hurt yourself. I love Windows/Linux/OSX/Solaris/etc... Apple/IBM/Dell. It's all good.

Sony has a sweet a** MP3 player and that's coming from someone who has and loves his IPOD.

Don't close your mind and heart on stuff, for dumb reasons. For example: I was a big time Napster person and Metallic pulled their crap. I immediatedly banned Metallic and started saying that I hated them, because they have bank accounts that are in the 8 - 9 digit range and they complain and sued because people wanted to download their music. I've bought CDs, because I've found a song that I liked. I've now realized that I can't live with hate in my heart, over nothing. I mean, they're Metallica and they're legendary.

I'm sure I've done nothing but anger you and I apologize.

Score: 0

By linkdup

posted Jan 7, 2005 - 2:04 PM

Interesting.

I'm actually the most open minded person that probably exhists on the earth. I understand that I probably sounded like an Apple basher but in all honesty I'm just being fair. It's funny because I like apple a lot I just don't like their mindset about business in general.

First off, I personally know way to many old school mac guys to think otherwise about what they think about computers in general. *whole nother story*

Secondly, I am the epotomy of a hardcore power user. Please don't assume I know nothing about technology and that I'm making empty comments. Not full of myself even though I know this is coming off like it. But I do know my schidt.

You sound like an understanding chap so understand that I am not just an apple basher. I dislike Windows, I somewhat like *nix, and I love osX... but damn I hate the harddware. Gimme OPTIONS apple. You want to bring up monopoly tactics?

Well I'm completely rambling now. Sorry folks.

Score: 0

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