[Macworld]

Post your comments for Apple music monopoly lawsuit seeks class-action status here

[jmincey]

I disagree with some of what this lawsuit covers (such as the implication that any given company should be compelled to support the proprietary music format of another company -- i.e., WMA), but I wholeheartedly support other aspects of this suit. I hope it will have the beneficial effect of opening up the entire digital music field so that no matter what player a person buys, or no matter what online store a person uses to obtain music files, each supports the other -- that way, consumers can choose the products and services they prefer, based on merit, rather than to be locked in to one thing or the other.

-Jeff Mincey

[flybynight]

This is stupid on so many levels. Why the heck should Apple be forced to make their product work with Microsoft's crappy proprietary WMA format which does the same thing that the suit is arguing about.

Apple has shown many times that they want to sell music without any DRM. If more record companies let them sell music in the "iTunes Plus" format, this wouldn't be an issue. When will people realize that it's not Apple forcing DRM on people, it's the record labels?!?! Arg.

Once again, the only ones who stand to benefit from this are the lawyers.

[MorrisTheCat]

Ugh! Am I having dejavu or haven't we already seen suits like this that were dismissed, or was it just that Apple has been threatened with such silly lawsuits so many times that it seems like it's already happened?

Quote

{quote:title=Macworld wrote:}The suit contends iPod-owning consumers can only buy music from iTunes, an unlawful tie-in that violates U.S. antitrust laws.{quote}

Where in heck are they coming up with this nonsense?! iPod users can ONLY buy from iTunes?? Really? Wow, then I guess all those ripped CDs, eMusic and Amazon MP3 files I've bought have been defying the laws of nature or something, because they sure seem to work on my iPod.
This suit should be dismissed just on that erroneous contention alone.

[haim_vital]

#1 - No one forced user to go and buy the ipod.
Apple makes product and can do what they want with it.

If the user wants to purchase Windows music, or what-not, then get a device from windows.
Oh, dont like the zune user experience? Then i doubt you will like the user experience of using windows formatted files. :)

Again, you cant force people to do things the way you want. You want change? Then go out, make your own ipod and make your own music store, and then you make it compatible with Microsoft.

I mean get a life people. - or do they need someone to hold their hand throughout their whole life?
Again, what a total joke...

- peace

[pdmarsh]

I agree that this is ridiculous on so many levels. Everyone (should) know(s) that you can play just about any music on an iPod, but you must convert it to the formats that the iPod supports. This is true of everyone's MP3 players. You can take the easy way and purchase music from Apple's iTunes Store, or the hard way and rip music from your legally purchased CDs into AAC or MP3 format and load into iTunes for syncing with your iPod. Is anyone suing other MP3 player vendors for not supporting AAC? Um, didn't think so.

I think this is a case of simple opportunism...everything to gain, nothing to lose (unless the courts start having the filers of these frivolous lawsuits pay Apple's court costs). Apple's doing well at the moment, and flush with cash, so let's see if we can intimidate them into giving a little of it to us and avoid having to pay their lawyers to defend themselves. Good luck with that.

[airhead]

You said it all, or about everything I was going to say. This lawsuit is foundation-less. Nuff said./

[memorydump]

I have about 6,000 songs on my iPod, of which maybe 200 were bought from the iTunes Store. Here is this person's 15 minutes of fame at Apple's expense. What a waste of time and money.

[warlock7]

Yet another BS lawsuit making BS claims about things.
bq. "The suit contends iPod-owning consumers can only buy music from iTunes..."
Buying music from the iTMS is certainly NOT the only way to purchase music that plays back on the device.



FRIVOLOUS

[difusi]

Here we go again.

Buy CD Rom, Put into computer. Copy Tracks into whatever format, save to iPod. Or Zune, Or Creative Zen.

Maybe this chick who is filing the suit is just too freaking lazy, or too stupid to understand which way the electrical prongs go into the freaking wall.

Lady, your last lawsuit over the retractable coffee tray in your PC failed. Get a life.

[jmincey]

To those who out of mindless reflex dismiss this (or any) lawsuit against Apple's music division as groundless or even frivolous, suppose Safari constituted 80% of the browser market and would read/render only those web sites developed with tools or protocols which only Apple owns. In this analogy, the web represents the iTunes Music Store (i.e., the source of content) and Safari represents the iPod (the "player" of the content).

[jpmhughes]

You are leaving out the most important part, the content itself.
Bad analogy.
Jim

[jpmm]

difusi said:

Here we go again.

Buy CD Rom, Put into computer. Copy Tracks into whatever format, save to iPod. Or Zune, Or Creative Zen.

Maybe this chick who is filing the suit is just too freaking lazy, or too stupid to understand which way the electrical prongs go into the freaking wall.

Lady, your last lawsuit over the retractable coffee tray in your PC failed. Get a life.

That's exactly what I was thinking... Everytime I purchase a song on iTunes, I immediately burn it to a CDRW and rip it, so I have it unprotected (in case I forget to "unauthorize" my computer when I upgrade - or anything like that).

Supporting WMA... Yuck! I do wish Apple supported other formats like FLAC or Ogg Vorbis, though.

The part about the CD coffee tray... Nice. :^0

[jmincey]

jpmhughes said:

You are leaving out the most important part, the content itself. Bad analogy.

Apple doesn't develop the content. The artists and music producers do that. What Apple provides is the delivery mechanism for the content -- i.e., the iTunes Store. Thus my analogy stands.