Eddy Cue Speaks on Apple's DRM Policies in iPod Antitrust Lawsuit

[Dave00]

So it turns out the plaintiffs appear to have purchased their iPods after the time period in question in the class action. Oops.

So now it's apparent that plaintiffs bought iPods so they could launch a lawsuit. What a bunch of slimeballs.

 

[RoadWarrior56]

I am not an audiofile, and I realized that my procedure to keep my "paid" music was a bit kludgy, but it did work. I hated DRM like everybody else and I never trusted it. Some of my music in those days was bought from the paid Napster store, and it had its own DRM to deal with. Napster eventually went out of business, and by having saved my tracks to a CD, they were not rendered worthless when Napster went out of business. This Apple lawsuit is just an unfortunate overhang from a bad era.

 

[JAT]

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.

Guess you've never heard of LP, cassettes, or even CDs. (CDs have DRM, but it does not block iPod/mp3 type use)

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Their analogy was that buying digital music should've been like buying a music CD, where any CD player could be used.

Classic Americans. Stifle the future for a buck. And I mean....One Dollar, that anybody might actually make from a silly class action.

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Oh come on... it's not that bad

You're giving the impression that the results will sound like crappy AM radio.

I've heard plenty of poor rips that sounded worse than the best AM radio. Worse than scratched up LPs, too.

 

[MacAddict1978]

Apple has done some rotten stuff, but this isn't one of those things.

Apple was also the company who used their influence and liberated us all from DRM. If not for Apple, DRM would still likely be inflicting pain upon us all.

Remember Steve Jobs public letter to the record labels blasting DRM?

I hope these greedy d-bags get nothing. Apple saved your asses from DRM.

 

[Solomani]

Obviously, this was an issue otherwise it wouldn't be a court case.

Uhh, there are lots of frivolous cases that go to court every single day. I doesn't mean the suits are valid or even worth the judge's time. But even the idiotic cases are still give a hearing at the very least.

 

[JosephAW]

Nearly all my purchased music library is still under DRM from nearly 10 years ago.

 

[Michael Scrip]

I've heard plenty of poor rips that sounded worse than the best AM radio. Worse than scratched up LPs, too.

Fix yo settings!!!

Seriously though... if an iTunes song sounds good on your computer... it will sound the same burned to a CD.

Now take that CD... and rip it using decent settings. The resulting MP3 will have nearly the same quality.

I say nearly... because of course there will be some loss. You might never even notice it. But the point is... it won't turn it into completely unlistenable garbage.

It certainly won't sound as bad as copying tape to tape like the other guy was talking about

 

[mikef07]

Uhh, there are lots of frivolous cases that go to court every single day. I doesn't mean the suits are valid or even worth the judge's time. But even the idiotic cases are still give a hearing at the very least.

You obviously have very little experience with federal court. First frivolous lawsuits are filed every day. However when it comes time for dismissal if you can't prove to a judge that the violations you have stated are legitimate then your case is dismissed. Second if there are not triable facts it goes to summary judgement at which time there is not trial. This passed both of those things and additionally was granted class action status. You don't waste federal judges time. They do not like that. Idiotic cases are given a hearing. it is called a dismissal hearing at it is dismissed. At these dismissal hearing you have to cite specific laws and cite case law. You can't just make crap up.

If you get to the point where the actual trial begins it is ludicrous to think it is frivolous. Unwinnable? Maybe, but not frivolous

 

[RockSpider]

We just want to protect our customers.

You're holding it wrong.

We want our customers to see the raw Aluminium underneath.

Poor Apple always in trouble for trying to help us, it's so sad.

 

[Tech198]

I agree that DRM was required, and Apple didn't want in back in the day, but was forced if they wanted the company to get on-board in the iTunes Store.

Their protecting themselves... Wouldn't you wanna do the same ?

However, if Apple was forced "at the time" to implement DRM (because the music industries where scary-cats to try and prevent piracy, then why did the record company's ease afterwards ?

They must of know what was going to happen which was the implementation done in the first place..

..and it has happened..... so, shoot yourselves in the foot for this one.

I agree that

 

[diddl14]

You must have never visited the iPhone and iPad sections after launch.

I actually made the mistake of going there once...

 

[gnasher729]

I understand why iTunes had DRM that wouldn't work on other players. I don't understand why the iPod couldn't play MP3s elsewhere that didn't have any drm.

What was the reason for that? I assume that an MP3 can't execute software on iPod OS, so I don't understand why it would be an issue.

All iPods could always play any .mp3s without DRM coming from any source. That's why you can't understand it, because it's not true, was never true, and there is an awful lot of misleading reporting here. All you had to do was to drag the mp3 files into your iTunes library.

What _actually_ happened wasn't that Apple deleted anything. What happened was that Realnetworks would try to put music with faked Apple DRM onto the iPod, but in the process messed up the iPod. iTunes figured out that the iPod was messed up and offered to restore it to factory settings. This would then sync the iPod again with your iTunes library.

If Realnetworks put music onto your iPod _and nowhere else_ then it is entirely their fault, because your music would have disappeared if your iPod was stolen, or if it broke and got replaced. Music in your iTunes library was always safe, especially if you had a backup as you should.

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This is different.

Apple not allowing apps onto a device that they sell is different than Apple intentionally deleting music from a device because it was not bought in their store.

Which is not what happened. Realplayer messed up your iPod, iTunes repaired it. If Realplayer put music on your iPod with no backup copies anywhere else, and then messed up the iPod so that it needed restoring, whose fault is that?

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Sounds to me like Eddie is admitting it. But I happen to think what they did was fine and was just the beginning on a road to where we are now.

The article is a mixture of thinks that Eddie said, and what Realplayer's lawyers are claiming, without identifying the second one but reporting it as truth.

I was wondering this too. Seems like it would just be MP3s with different DRM formats. Never have I heard of DRM-free music files being deleted.

iTunes deletes music on my iPod all the time. It does that when I change my playlists and sync; some music gets deleted, some gets added. Should my iPod ever get corrupted, then I know that iTunes will restore it to factory settings, which deletes all music on it, and right after deleting it it will download it again from the iTunes library. Of course Realplayer's lawyers won't mention that bit, they just say "iTunes deleted music".

What Realplayer did was selling music aimed at iPod users with DRM that could only be put on the iPod with a major hack. Just like iTunes music could have been put onto a Zune player only with a major hack (but apparently nobody, including Apple, tried). As far as "stifling competition" goes, Realplayer could have sold music without DRM, which would have just worked, and they would have had a major competitive advantage to iTunes. Just like I can download music from Amazon, and it gets added to iTunes just fine and plays on my iPod just fine.

 

[gnasher729]

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.

So Realplayer should have gone to the record companies and asked for a DRM-free license. That's what business is about, negotiating with suppliers.

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Nearly all my purchased music library is still under DRM from nearly 10 years ago.

If it comes from Apple, and you have more than $25 worth of music, you might consider paying for iTunes Match once. It will replace all the music with DRM-free 256KBit versions.

 

[Iconoclysm]

The fact that you don't understand the issue is irrelevant.

Obviously, this was an issue otherwise it wouldn't be a court case. If Apple is guilty of intentionally stifling the competition by their use of DRM on their products, they're going to owe lots in damages.

It's a court case because someone is trying hard to make it an issue and a lot of money is at stake. Even if Apple is "guilty" of doing that, there is nothing that says it is illegal - let alone make them "guilty".

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This is different.

Apple not allowing apps onto a device that they sell is different than Apple intentionally deleting music from a device because it was not bought in their store.

Oh really? How is it different from Apple locking out jailbreakers with new versions of iOS, crippling software sold by vendors that only works on a jailbroken iPhone/iPad? Answer: it's exactly the same.

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That sounds like a pretty poor defense from Cue. Maybe just poorly-phrased, but it sounds like he's saying "Our thirst for higher profits justifies whatever we did."

Profits? At the time, they were lucky to sustain themselves...this is what gets me about a lot of the flack Apple takes for its business practices, especially in this early-mid 2000's era. They needed success to survive, not to profit.

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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.

You seem to underestimate both consumers and jurors. Not everyone hates corporations for making profits, and not everyone hates Apple.

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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.

As much as it sucks, there is nothing illegal about locking out third party services from your product.

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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.

Why does "higher priced" keep coming up here? How does the price of the product do anything but defer people from buying Apple's product? They had a chance at owning the long tail of that market and they blew it by trying to circumvent copy protection that Apple was under contract to provide by the content owners.

iPods were more expensive but not by much when compared to an actual competing player instead of a $50 SD card based MP3 player.

In the end, I'm one of the people that refused to buy iPods because of DRM...I probably gave Creative and others 10x what my friends gave to Apple. Hell, I even bought a Kenwood Music Keg (before Kenwood bought the company) for my car. I bought CD's, ripped them at higher quality than Apple provided...as a consumer who chose not to purchase Apple's stuff, I can't see how this is a legitimate complaint.

 

[HEK]

Having owned an iPod and experiencing this exact scenario that is the subject of this court case myself, my crystal ball tells me Apple is going to end up having to pay.

My crystal ball says this suit is about to be thrown out of court. Seems the plaintiff got confused, cough cough, regarding what iPods she actually owned and when. as it sits, the plaintiff's lawyers need proof of purchase as Apple's records of serial numbers show plaintiff's devices outside the time frame for the suit. Big bobo there!

 

[ehrens]

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.

This is incorrect. I subscribed to eMusic for a time in 2004-5, and had (and still have) several DRM free MP3s in my iTunes library. All have played without incident on all of my Apple devices throughout history (Mac mini G4, 3rd gen classic, iBook G4, 1st gen photo, 5th gen classic, 1st gen touch, 2nd gen shuffle, unibody MacBook, 3rd gen touch, 4th gen shuffle, iPhone 4, iPad 2, MacBook Pro Sandy Bridge, iPhone 5, iPad Air, MacBook Air Haswell, Mac mini Ivy Bridge, iPhone 5s).

 

[SirCheese]

I say if what he says is true, it will likely be brought up by the defense and will be taken into consideration.

Although, I would think it would have been brought up in the last 10 years.

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There is nothing to "go after." There is no case here. There is no case with Apple and the record companies.

Well, obviously there is.

 

[Rogifan]

]Profits? At the time, they were lucky to sustain themselves...this is what gets me about a lot of the flack Apple takes for its business practices, especially in this early-mid 2000's era. They needed success to survive, not to profit.

Yep in the early 2000s Apple was barely profitable. 2005 was the first really profitable year at $1.3B annual profit. These days they probably make 6 times that in one quarter.

 

[31 Flavas]

The fact that you don't understand the issue is irrelevant.

Obviously, this was an issue otherwise it wouldn't be a court case. If Apple is guilty of intentionally stifling the competition by their use of DRM on their products, they're going to owe lots in damages.

Who was it, though, that demanded DRM on the music sold? Apple wasn't using DRM just to stick it to consumers.

 

[lederermc]

It seems reasonable for iTunes to delete music from the iPod that it could not play. Okay, they could have displayed a dialog box, "You have xxx MBs of unplayable (music) files on your iPod. Would like iTunes to remove the unplayable files for your iPod? Y/N. The files will remain on your computer." And in the future, they could have just not loaded these non-apple files into the device. Or into iTunes for that matter. The law suit is frivolous.

 

[tongxinshe]

The fact that you don't understand the issue is irrelevant.

Obviously, this was an issue otherwise it wouldn't be a court case. If Apple is guilty of intentionally stifling the competition by their use of DRM on their products, they're going to owe lots in damages.

Without DRM and all of the subsequent "protection" Apple did, Apple would have been sued to death by the record labels as the company Napster did.

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I understand why iTunes had DRM that wouldn't work on other players. I don't understand why the iPod couldn't play MP3s elsewhere that didn't have any drm.

What was the reason for that? I assume that an MP3 can't execute software on iPod OS, so I don't understand why it would be an issue.

The fact is, iPods never prevented non-DRMed MP3 files from playing. It just prevented fake FairPlay-DRMed files and other DRM-format files from playing.

 

[rolphi]

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)

---

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.

Genuine questions:

Which market was Apple supposed to have a monopoly share of and was abusing? Music players or music sales?

What does the ability to play RealNetworks songs have to do with having to continue to buy an iPod? If the incompatibility to play RealNetworks songs was a problem, wouldn't that have caused people to not want to buy an iPod as they're next device? Isn't that the opposite of what they're claiming?

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

"There's no way for us to have done that and had the success we had,"

Yeah, I think that statement helped the plaintiffs. Yes, without denying all other music player makers the ability to play iTunes music purchases, we wouldn't have had the success we had. Well, duh. Monopolizing one sub-market (e.g. iTunes music sales or OS X/Mac software) by tying it in an exclusive Apple-allowed-only to another market (iPods or the Mac) is how Apple does business and it's how they reached #1 tech giant in the world. It also demonstrates why exclusive tying across market segments should be categorically illegal and enforced as such. The music industry's requirements for DRM (also a stupid idea since it only punishes legitimate customers) should also be illegal.

We're still stuck with stupid movie DRM (that makes it difficult and "illegal" according to the ill-advised DMCA) to move movies from Blu-Ray to iTunes (especially since many movie studios no longer support iTunes for "digital copies") or iTunes movies (still using Fairplay) to other software players, thus locking you into the Apple system again without having to repurchase said software (similar to having to repurchase the Windows version of a Mac program if you want to switch to someone else's computer hardware since they are not allowed to run OS X even virtually. Funny how Apple lets you run Windows (to their advantage to sell more hardware) but won't reciprocate. Apple is GREEDY pure and simple and no amount of excuses will change that.

 

[jclo]

This is incorrect. I subscribed to eMusic for a time in 2004-5, and had (and still have) several DRM free MP3s in my iTunes library. All have played without incident on all of my Apple devices throughout history (Mac mini G4, 3rd gen classic, iBook G4, 1st gen photo, 5th gen classic, 1st gen touch, 2nd gen shuffle, unibody MacBook, 3rd gen touch, 4th gen shuffle, iPhone 4, iPad 2, MacBook Pro Sandy Bridge, iPhone 5, iPad Air, MacBook Air Haswell, Mac mini Ivy Bridge, iPhone 5s).

eMusic only sold indie music and did not have any deals with the major record companies. Very different situation.

 

[touchdown100]

Erm your wrong

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??

I hate to say this but you obviously in my opinion know nothing about the legal system in America. I DO! I read Law and Criminology at University. I studied the legal system in America as part of the course.
Yes to a degree you have a point that there has to be a certain amount of validity in order to go to trial. However the US is the Law suit capital of the world. There are Law suits in the US where a person holds a dinner party and serves only Alcoholic drinks and then because one of their friends has to drive home(thus breaking the drink drive law) they sue their friend the host.
That has no basis in reality or decency just because the host did not supply non Alcoholic drinks.
The Lawyers acting on behalf of the Plaintiffs would have argued some sort of intellectual double back somersault in order to keep the trial going. After all they are Lawyers and the truth of a situation is not as important to them as making a name for themselves and making a lot of money.

Given enough Data you can pretty much argue any case you wish to, the fact it may be wrong does not matter. Just look at Politicians, they do it all the time. Making out a certain case is true even when it turns out to be false..The Iraq war for instance, they said it was about weapons of mass destruction and getting rid of Al-Qeada now we know thanks to Wiki leaks that that was a lie and false.

So I have just blown your argument clearly out of the water, This is a case of the Plaintiffs and their Lawyers wanting money for nothing(IMO). Apple has no more duty to let non DRM music play on the Ipod as Samsung would to let IOS apps work on it's Android devices.

ANY COMPANY HAS THE RIGHT TO PROTECT IT"S INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND CONTENT, As long as it does not violate the user's legal rights. The plaintiff's rights were never violated. It is not their right to use the device as they see fit. Any company can stipulate how a device/service is to be used at time or purchase and by purchasing the device/service you agree to those terms. IT"S CALLED THE EULA(End User License Agreement).

1 to me, 0 to you!

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I hate to say this but you obviously in my opinion know nothing about the legal system in America. I DO! I read Law and Criminology at University. I studied the legal system in America as part of the course.
Yes to a degree you have a point that there has to be a certain amount of validity in order to go to trial. However the US is the Law suit capital of the world. There are Law suits in the US where a person holds a dinner party and serves only Alcoholic drinks and then because one of their friends has to drive home(thus breaking the drink drive law) they sue their friend the host.
That has no basis in reality or decency just because the host did not supply non Alcoholic drinks.
The Lawyers acting on behalf of the Plaintiffs would have argued some sort of intellectual double back somersault in order to keep the trial going. After all they are Lawyers and the truth of a situation is not as important to them as making a name for themselves and making a lot of money.

Given enough Data you can pretty much argue any case you wish to, the fact it may be wrong does not matter. Just look at Politicians, they do it all the time. Making out a certain case is true even when it turns out to be false..The Iraq war for instance, they said it was about weapons of mass destruction and getting rid of Al-Qeada now we know thanks to Wiki leaks that that was a lie and false.

So I have just blown your argument clearly out of the water, This is a case of the Plaintiffs and their Lawyers wanting money for nothing(IMO). Apple has no more duty to let non DRM music play on the Ipod as Samsung would to let IOS apps work on it's Android devices.

ANY COMPANY HAS THE RIGHT TO PROTECT IT"S INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND CONTENT, As long as it does not violate the user's legal rights. The plaintiff's rights were never violated. It is not their right to use the device as they see fit. Any company can stipulate how a device/service is to be used at time or purchase and by purchasing the device/service you agree to those terms. IT"S CALLED THE EULA(End User License Agreement).

1 to me, 0 to you!

I have to make a correction to post I just made, I meant to say at the end that Apple has no more right to let non Apple DRM music play on the Ipod than Samsung would to let IOS apps load on to it's Android devices.