Apple to face iPod/iTunes antitrust suit

Yes, these frivolous lawsuits are irritating. The more interesting thing is the humorous fact that every one of his claims is false or ignorant.
I can play my iTunes music on ANY industry standard player, without extra software. The iTunes software allows users to burn audio CDs - these can be encoded into any other player...
I have only purchased a few songs from the iTunes store - the rest were encoded from my CDs into iTunes!

I have read through all of the above comments and I still don't get it. I hope this gets thrown out of court. One day, if Apple at that point has a REAL monopoly I hope this issue comes back but right now they don't have a monopoly, they're just really popular. Simple as that. What's the issue here, this guy cannot get some music he bought somewhere on to the iPod? Well actually he _could_ do that but it'd take installing some extra applications and doing a little leg work. But he wants to be able to do it the easy way I guess... Or maybe he wants to play music he bought on iTMS on some other player. I hate DRM as much as the next guy, but who did he buy the music from? Yeah it was on the iTMS but the only way it got on there was with the permission of the record companies that required DRM such that it wouldn't be able to be played on other devices. Sucks but it's the way it is. Go bitch at congress buddy, it ain't Apple's fault they're getting screwed by the record companies just like we are.

The cell phone I bought from T-Mobile won't work with Verizon. Tough luck. I knew that when I bought it, and really I could get it to work with Verizon if I tried hard enough. Grow up man. Sheesh. You buy and XBox and it will not play PS2 games, you buy a computer and it won't play Nintendo games. Dude, that's the way it is, they're different things. Some music players play ACC files, some play MP3 files, some play WMA files, some play RA files. Stop your bitchin' and get out of the kitchen.

This just annoys me. The iPod CAN be used with other services, the other services just don't want to pay Apple's licensing fees to gain access to the apple DRM system.

Tommy, pray I don't meet you on the street, dude...

This just annoys me. The iPod CAN be used with other services, the other services just don't want to pay Apple's licensing fees to gain access to the apple DRM system.

Tommy, pray I don't meet you on the street, dude...

Um...

This is really old news. The suit was first filed in January of *last* year, and the article cited is from September of last year which is when Judge War actually gave the green-light.. Searching through FindLaw, Google, Google News, it doesn't look like there's been any further progress on this.

What's really and truly sad about this is that it seems that every blog in the world has picked up on this as news today.

LOL! The point of having iTMS is to promote the iPod, Jerry. The store was intended to be a loss leader, if necessary. Your proposal would undermine the reason for Apple opening iTMS in the first place. Profit from even a very successful iTMS would be just a drop in the bucket compared to profit from selling iPods.

(I am curious about stars. Are they given for making comments that make no sense?)

Im in!! I cant get my microwave to play music purchased from ANY online music seller. Im in the money Im in the money im in the money

What does this mean then for any product that does not work on someone elses product ie playstation versus Xbox or Xbox v playstation, wow gameboy cartridges in my VCR, aesome the possibilities are endless. Look out printer manufatures, you will have to start offering ways for that $99 printer to hook up to my waffle iron and be able to print menu's

Apple could kill this lawsuit if they started licensing access to the iTunes Music Store to the other MP3 players. Such an action would not hurt them one bit because people new to MP3 players do not buy iPods because of the iTunes Store. Thus it won't impact sales of the iPods by opening up the iTunes Store and its FairPlay DRM. In fact, what it would cause would be the total collapse of the iTunes Store competitors because then there would not be any incentive for people to use them (i.e. if they bought a Creative Zen or something). If Apple did this, they could stave off the other monopoly charges for probably half a decade more. And I totally support this. I wish they'd be penny-wise and not pound foolish.

Of course, we don't know the terms of the RIAA agreement with Apple. Perhaps the agreement states that Apple is not supposed to open up access to non-Apple products through iTunes. Perhaps the music industry did not want Apple creating an all-encompassing online store and perhaps they did not believe Apple would have become a fraction of the success they have achieved when the original contract was signed. So it could all actually be the machinations of the RIAA that backfired on them.

You have got it all wrong... He's not suing because he can't play music from other stores on his iPod, he's suing because he can't play his iTMS bought song on anything BUT iTunes and an iPod...

or at least that's what he was claiming last year...

I don't get this at all. Don't like the retrictions of an iPod? Buy a Creative player. It's not that difficult to do. It's called shopping. If I like everything about a car stereo except it won't tune down to 87.7 (which some don't), I'm not going to sue them. I'll just buy another brand. Done and done.