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Eddy Cue Speaks on Apple's DRM Policies in iPod Antitrust Lawsuit
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"Obviously, this was an issue otherwise it wouldn't be a court case" is a general statement. I don't see why the iPod case is special, and you didn't say why.
I say if what he says is true, it will likely be brought up by the defense and will be taken into consideration.
The DRM in those days was mostly for show IMO. My first MP3 player was a Sandisk Sensa. I bought a fair amount of DRM protected music from iTunes to play on it between 2006 and 2009. All you had to do was to burn it onto a CD from itunes and then to rerip that CD into Windows Media Player or Napster (the later legal version) as a new MP3 file. Then move it onto your non-apple player. Yes, there was redundancy, but you had multiple backups including physical media, which is still the best back up source. It was just as easy to go the other way - from 3rd party to Apple, which is what I did with my first ipod.
Is this an anti-trust lawsuit that no one else is aware of? What does stifling competition have to do with anything?
I thought it was a spot on defence. You putting words in his mouth doesn't make it so.
Apple was building the legal digital download model and had to convince the music industry to move away from their convoluted models.
In due course, they pushed them to drop DRM at least for music along with every competitor. This lawsuit is a waste of time and taxpayer money to justify higher profits for the plaintiffs.
Why not sue Microsoft for their "PlayForSure" or sue DECE for locking movies down to devices playing UltraViolet DRM, or Disney for Keychest or Amazon DRM to lock ebooks & movies ....etc. etc. ??
This is an on-going practice and incompatible DRM systems still exist as a means of "protecting" content and each company does their own thing.
Let's not condemn Apple for being the only company successful in bringing a viable digital media system to the table that caught on with the public.
Redundancy and a lowering of audio quality, because you're ripping a rip and compressing an already compressed recording.
Same effect as copying audio from a tape to another tape over and over again.
Ah. I hadn't realized that you were affected, and therefore biased to see damages. I'll keep that in mind when I read your posts on the matter.
You don't have to take my word for it. Keep your eyes on the case. I'm sure everything will get sorted out as it should.
Look, it doesn't matter what he actually meant. What matters is the jury members' perception of what he said. I'll grant you there may be a difference in-context, but to me "There's no way for us to have done that and had the success we had" is not going to go over well with a jury because it sounds like an executive of a mega-corporation justifying their actions on the basis of rapacious profit lust. Jurors are also consumers and many won't like the sound of that. We'll see.
Oh believe me, I'd love to see Apple go after the record companies after this.
Break out the popcorn for that one.
There is nothing to "go after." There is no case here. There is no case with Apple and the record companies.
People who bought iPods and accepted the EULA agreed that they could play only music from their own CDs that they ripped into iTunes, or music that they bought from the iTunes store. Period.
Apple signed an agreement with the record companies that they would put DRM on the music. Period.
And to one of your earlier posts, this is, by definition a frivolous case.
I'm not super well versed in DRM policies, but the one oversight in Gruber's post is that at the time when Apple was updating iTunes to put an end to RealNetworks' reverse engineering of the FairPlay DRM, no one was selling DRM-free music. Amazon didn't start selling music until late 2007 and before Amazon, record labels seemed fairly resistant to allowing music services to offer music without DRM. It wasn't until Amazon negotiated DRM-free music that it began to catch on, so it's very likely that selling DRM-free music wasn't an option for RealNetworks due to the same record label restrictions that prevented Apple from selling DRM-free music at the time.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/26/technology/26real.html
RealNetworks did begin offering DRM-free music as soon as record labels allowed it:
http://www.macworld.com/article/1057136/drmreal.html
https://gigaom.com/2007/08/21/apple-the-drm-free-market-madness/
http://investor.realnetworks.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=259276
All of the music labels that worked with RealNetworks were supposedly on board with Harmony, which seems to lend credence to Cue's statement (here: http://www.cnet.com/news/itunes-chief-eddy-cue-works-to-reset-apple-ipod-narrative/) that record labels wanted DRM but also wanted interoperability.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB109079714398973359
Obviously music files and DRM are separate issues, but saying RealNetworks should have just offered DRM-free files is a bit of an oversimplification of what was going on at the time -- the struggle to rectify what music labels wanted with what was possible on both ends of the spectrum.
By not licensing FairPlay and by not supporting alternate forms of DRM, Apple *was* locking out third-party services because they likely didn't have an option at the time to offer DRM-free content.
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Case is likely to be dismissed due to a lack of plaintiffs with standing.
LOL
http://www.nasdaq.com/article/judge...iffs-may-not-have-bought-ipods-20141204-01150
LOL
http://www.nasdaq.com/article/judge...iffs-may-not-have-bought-ipods-20141204-01150
Oh believe me, I'd love to see Apple go after the record companies after this.
Break out the popcorn for that one.
This actually would be great for everyone, except the record labels of course. Really the way the music industry operates makes the record labels money, but the artists, who provide the talent and work really get the short end of the stick.
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That's not true, eMusic has been offering DRM free music since 1998.
He may have been referring to success in moving to a drm-free structure. Consumers would love that. We'll simply have to see what shakes out.
But eMusic didn't have contracts with major record labels as a result of its decision to offer DRM-free music, it was offering all indie music.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2006/05/emusic/
You make a very naive assumption saying it's an issue or it wouldn't be a court case. I can only assume you don't work in legal nor follow legal civil or criminal cases closely. In fact, in this case, the two lead plaintiffs did not purchase their products within the time period of the suit and lied in their depositions. Apple has produced records of purchase, including serial numbers of products matching serial numbers complainants entered into court documents. Check it out, you might question your theory.
"A letter from Apple to presiding Judge Yvonne Gonzales Rogers notes both plaintiffs named in the case have not produced evidence showing they owned an iPod purchased within the suit's effective September 2006 to March 2009 time period, reports The New York Times."
It could, plenty of people were able to rip CDs and play the tracks, and at that time it was the only legal way to get DRM free music. What the iPod couldn't do was play DRM protected files from another store. And that is the Label's fault not Apple's.
that would be one of the first things a competent lawyer would ask for to even move forward. if this is true then damn, they're either frauds or a bunch of stoned idiots. if they don't even currently possess the actual iPod in question then wtf??
Yes, it's mostly an anti-trust lawsuit. From the complaint:
COUNT I: MONOPOLIZATION -(For Violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, 15 U.S.C. §2) Violations Resulting from the Unlawful Maintenance of Monopoly Power in the Portable Digital Media Player Market
COUNT II: ATTEMPTED MONOPOLIZATION - For Violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, 15 U.S.C. §2) Violations Resulting from Unlawful Attempted Monopolization of the Portable Digital Media Player Market
COUNT III - (For Violation of the Cartwright Act, Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code §§16270, et seq.)
COUNT IV - (For Violation of California Unfair Competition Law, Bus. & Prof. Code §§17200, et seq.)
COUNT V - (For Violation of the Consumers Legal Remedies Act, Cal. Civil Code §§1750, et seq.)
COUNT VI - (For Common Law Monopolization Business Practices)
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The class action's complaint is that once they bought players and music from Apple, they were trapped into buying more expensive Apple players in order to retain the ability to play their music.
Their analogy was that buying digital music should've been like buying a music CD, where any CD player could be used.
The lawsuit claims that by actively working to stop any compatibility, Apple used their market position to force users to stick with Apple's higher priced playback devices.
And Apple was not actively deleting music files protected with a DRM schema other than FairPlay. Their support engineers were instructing customers to restore their iPods, which by process deletes all music from the device, including music files protected with a DRM schema other than FairPlay.
So the end result was, indeed, music files protected with a DRM schema other than FairPlay were deleted from the iPod, but some of these media stories give the impression that iTunes itself was scanning a user's HDD or iPod and selectively deleting those files autonomously while ignoring music files that did not have DRM or were protected with FairPlay DRM.
And Apple is arguing that this was a condition imposed on them by the music labels in order to offer the iTunes Store and not a unilateral decision on the company's part.
Oh come on... it's not that bad
You're giving the impression that the results will sound like crappy AM radio.
When you burn a song to a CD from iTunes... the quality doesn't change during that step. The song on the CD will sound exactly like it did on your computer.
Yes... the ripping and encoding will lower the quality slightly... but I doubt anyone would even notice.
If this was school... it would be like going from an A to an A-
Just be sure to encode them into MP3s at the highest setting possible (320kbps)
It's still a one-generation loss... but the drop in quality would be barely perceptible.
A one-generation loss from tape to tape is FAR worse...
I remember burning purchased iTunes songs to CD and ripping them back into MP3s in the old days. But when listening to those songs I never said "OMG my ears are bleeding!"