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Steve Jobs Required to Provide Deposition in 2005 iTunes Antitrust Case
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A few years before they announced the dropping of the DRM there was a letter from Jobs saying that they cannot drop it until the labels approve it and that they would do it as soon as they could.
I would have to agree. Any lawsuit against the basic DRM construct, regardless of who is imposing it or with whatever type of media, is a good thing. Be it Amazon-purchased iBooks only being able to (legally) be used via the Kindle application, DRM is a horrible thing. If I buy a file, I want to own the file to do whatever I want with it - same as if I bought a DVD or a paperback book.
In fact, Apple should lose this trial purposely as it will then serve as a precedent against the DRM roadblock in the future. Even Apple themselves do not like DRM'd media files at face value, it is the publishing/recording/etc industry that imposes them on Apple's products. But, I know they will not, because this is what they base their whole App Store on. Essentially all iPhone/iPod/iPad Apps are DRM'd.
No, they are not. That isn't how competition/anti-trust law works. I'm not saying Apple were in the wrong here (I don't know much about this case) but idea that companies can do whatever they like with their products is quite wrong- and as consumers we are all better for it!
- Apple created a DRM at the record labels request to protect music
- Creative reverse engineered this copy protection system
- Creative said they planned to sell this (reverse engineered) system to third parties
- Apple updated the DRM to make it more secure, as Creative products are not Apple hardware the new DRM broke Creatives hack
At this point Creative gave up. I find the idea that you could sue Apple because you bought a Creative player based on the fact Creative reverse engineered (without permission) a DRM system created by Apple so you could play protected music from Apple on a Creative device is astounding.
I don't like monopolies any more than the next person but this is frivolous in the extreme.
In terms of analogies FairPlay is a DRM system so is the CSS system for DVDs. Reverse engineering DVD encryption so you can watch the film on your iOS device is not allowed. In fact the guy who wrote the De-CSS application spent years stopping himself from being extradited to the US for charges. Licensing is decided by the DVD board.
Creative reverse engineered a DRM system without a license similar to what happened to DVD. Imagine if Apple release iTunes with a built in DVD ripper so you could rip DVD's to FairPlay format automatically in iTunes! Somehow I don't think that would go down well with the DVD board or in the law courts.
If you look at it from a licensing standpoint you do not have to license technology to your competitors, the only issues that arise are when you get a total monopoly and then start to abuse that power. Apple blocking a company from reverse engineering their copy protection system I think they have a strong case this is not a monopolistic move.
Finally with a blank CD and 30 mins of spare time and you can create a DRM free version of any album so I think this lawsuit does not have a leg to stand on as Apple did offer an analogue hole.
Edwin
Well, given that at that time it was widely acknowledged that only a small fraction (<10%) of music that was on iPods was downloaded from the iTunes Store and most music was ripped from CDs, it might be closer to say that if you were buying gas from a car company then Toyota only allowed you to use their gas, but any standard gas station was still allowed.
It is important to remember that there is a lot of nuance in the question of anti-competitive behavior. If I created a whole new means of getting movie and other video content to consumers, and it was based on a technology that I had absolute control over, I would not be required to provide access to that technology to anyone else, despite the fact that I had a defacto monopoly, simply because there are many other ways for consumers to get their video.
This case would likely be a much stronger one today, given Apple's greater position of dominance in the market...
How do you explain all of Steve's other anti-DRM comments in the past? He'd talked about those feelings before. That kind of kills your "they changed their minds at the last minute" theory, doesn't it?
Exactly. The labels made Apple create a secure system. Creative broke that system. Apple had no choice but to fix it or the labels would've pulled their music out of the iTunes store.
I fail to see any point in this in which Apple had the opportunity to act differently than they did.
Exactly.... Fairplay was designed to be compliant with the DRMA. Trying to circumvent it is illegal. Reverse engineering software typically violates your license to use it. And Apple can just say "we had to be compliant with the DRMA requirements from the music producers". Any action against Apple should mean some amendment to the DRMA.
It's been gone for several years now.
Movies still have it, but all music is DRM free, just like every other store now.
The way the laws work in the US, a company cannot actively work to specifically create a monopoly. This is usually interpreted to be engaging in activities that do not increase the capability or utility of your product or service, but serve only to reduce the capability or utility of a competitor.
There is no legal requirement in the US for a company to assist a competitor, nor is there a prohibition against increasing your marketshare by making your product more desirable by consumers. Apple is being sued because they tried to cripple RealNetwork's service, not because they didn't engineer in a feature to make Real's content playable. That is the difference. It is also referred to as Restraint of Trade.
There is no legal mandate to actively help your competitor, you just can't actively hurt them directly.
The potential complicating factor is if Real infringed on Apple's IP by reverse engineering the Harmony DRM. Apple could take the approach of claiming what they did was a defensive maneuver to protect their DRM IP that Real infringed.
There is no legal requirement in the US for a company to assist a competitor, nor is there a prohibition against increasing your marketshare by making your product more desirable by consumers. Apple is being sued because they tried to cripple RealNetwork's service, not because they didn't engineer in a feature to make Real's content playable. That is the difference. It is also referred to as Restraint of Trade.
There is no legal mandate to actively help your competitor, you just can't actively hurt them directly.
The potential complicating factor is if Real infringed on Apple's IP by reverse engineering the Harmony DRM. Apple could take the approach of claiming what they did was a defensive maneuver to protect their DRM IP that Real infringed.
more like ford suing sony or memorex because there cd's only play in certain cd players.
with that thinking, every market would be extremely segregated.
We all DRM wasn't apples call, but in the end DRM is deceased as it should. You buy a song, its your song to play.
that because there is no standard for games. There is for playing music. Great try.
I like this analogy very much. Nintendo would have no legal right to release a hack that allowed Wii games to run on the xBox 360, especially if they reverse-engineered Microsoft's proprietary system to do it.
What RealPlayer should have done, instead of hacking Fairplay, is convince the studios to let them sell DRM-free tracks that would have no problem playing on the iPod. Like Amazon did.
If, extending the analogy,
- Ford started selling engines for the express purpose of putting them in Toyotas
- made it easy [really easy] to do
- the practice started to catch on
- thus losing Toyota sales of cars with anything more than the minimal engine ("well, I'm just going to replace it anyway...")
- thus making Toyota appear culpable when the retrofit doesn't work well (or, even if the new engines run fine, Toyota doesn't want to risk such conversions backfiring on them if something unexpected happens)
Toyota might start to give a d@mn, and might very well leverage the next broad "free recall/repair" to install a part rendering those Ford engines inoperable in such an unauthorized/unexpected retrofit, and start building future cars to resist such retrofits.
Yeah, the analogy DOES work if you follow it through. Unless the product is built with cross-compatibility in mind, companies don't like the actual and potential risks of others leveraging the platform.
Except that Harmony didn't strip Fairplay songs of their protection, it was a method of converting already DRM'd songs bought from RealPlayer into a Fairplay format so they could be played on the iPod. It didn't offer consumers anyway to remove the protection from purchased songs so they could be played universally.