FairPlay DRM
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Apple's iPod antitrust lawsuit hinges on iTunes 7
Apple's iPod antitrust lawsuit wrapped up on Monday afternoon, capping off a week-long trial that has been close to 10 years in the making. Now, the case has been handed off to a jury that will deliberate whether or not Apple chose to keep its iTunes/iPod ecosystem closed off for anti-competitive reasons or if it was done for security reasons. If there's been one recurring theme from Apple throughout the entirety of the trial, it's that keeping competing music services off of the iPod was more about security than anything else. In fact, Steve Jobs, during a videotaped deposition conducted in 2011, said that record companies reserved the right to immediately remove all of their music from iTunes if someone figured out a way to circumvent Apple's FairPlay DRM. Ars Technica adds: The jury will make an unusual split decision, deliberating first over the narrow issue of whether iTunes 7.0 was a true product improvement or an anti-competitive scheme to kick out Apple competitor RealNetworks. If the jury sees the "software and firmware updates" in iTunes 7.0 as a real improvement, the case will be over-a win for Apple. If it doesn't see it that way, the jurors will still have to decide if Apple broke competition laws and, if so, how much the company should pay in damages. Plaintiffs are asking for $351 million, and any award will be tripled under antitrust law. It's an interesting case for the jury to decide because the "damage" Apple was so fearful of is purely theoretical. Because Apple was so vigilant about locking down the iPod, Apple can't really point to any examples which illustrate how a wide open iPod would adversely affect the user experience. As for iTunes 7, the software update at the heart of this legal battle, well, we covered all of its improvements all the way back in 2006. Album & Cover Flow views - you can now view your library by album art covers, or use a snazzy 3D 'cover flow' (you mean, like CoverFlow?) to really show off New Source organization - each media type gets its own library and source, offering much easier access and organization Gapless playback - MP3, AAC and Apple Lossless files that are one cohesive album can now sound like one 640 x 480 video resolution for TV and - as everyone predicted - movie downloads from the likes of Disney, Pixar, Touchstone, Miramax. Movies adopt the same usage rights as TV shows (i.e. - no burning) Integrated iPod management - you can adjust what media is synced to your iPod from within iTunes, instead of having to clunk around in the preferences. We haven't seen what this looks like yet, but it sounds like a much better idea for obvious reasons Transfer purchases via iPod Those seem like rather substantive upgrades to me.
Apple set to go to trial in November over FairPlay DRM and iTunes lock-in
The year isn't 2007 so you might be surprised to learn that Apple, in 2014, still has a pending legal class action suit regarding iPods and the FairPlay DRM that used to shroud every song sold on iTunes. The lawsuit dates all the way back to 2004 and alleges that Apple in the mid-2000s illegally used DRM to lock in users to the Apple ecosystem by making the cost of switching prohibitively high. The plaintiffs in the case are seeking $350 million in damages. Ars Technica reports: Last week, US District Judge Yvonne Gonzales Rogers gave the green light (PDF) to sending a long-running antitrust lawsuit against Apple to trial. Plaintiffs in the case say that Apple used its FairPlay DRM system to "lock in" its customers and make it costly to switch to technology built by competitors, like Real Networks. They describe how Apple kept updating iTunes to make sure songs bought from Real's competing digital music store couldn't be used on iPods. As a result of this lock-in, Apple was able to overcharge its customers to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. With Judge Rogers finding Apple's recent effort to have the case dismissed unpersuasive, the case is slated to go to trial on November 17.
Apple aware of corrupt apps issue, working on a fix (Update: Fixed!)
Earlier this morning, reports started circulating that the App Store was pushing corrupt binaries to iOS and Mac users, resulting in constant crashes of the affected apps. Marco Arment, of Instapaper fame, was one of the first to notice and very vocal -- bringing the issue to the attention of many in the media and at Apple. The list of affected apps is pretty staggering, including such high profile titles as Angry Birds Space, Yahoo! Search, Google Reader and, of course, Instapaper. The number of developers affected now tops 115, so we'd hold off on those updates. For the first several hours Apple was mum on the issue, but it has finally acknowledged the problem in the support forums and even reached out to developers via email. Suspicions seem to be that the FairPlay DRM is at the root, but until we have official word from Apple we'll refrain from laying the blame at its feet. Cupertino is working (we assume tirelessly) on a fix, which will hopefully be delivered sooner, rather than later. Update: Apple has confirmed to AllThingsD that the problem was due to a "server that generated DRM code" and has been fixed. Affected end users are advised to delete the corrupted apps and redownload them.
iPod owners notified of RealNetworks-related lawsuit's class action status, given chance to cash in (updated: not Real)
Remember the 2005 lawsuit over Apple's effort to keep RealNetworks' Harmony DRM off of the iPod, calling the countermeasures an abuse that locked customers into Apple's FairPlay copy protection and the iTunes Store? You're forgiven if you don't -- the complaint was filed in 2005. Even with iTunes having gone primarily DRM-free over three years ago, though, owners of iPods bought between September 12th, 2006 and March 31st, 2009 are just now getting notices that they qualify for a slice of any damages if they register and Rhapsody's former owner the class action group wins in court. Of course, there's no guarantee that RealNetworks former Rhapsody users will win and get you music money to feed your iPod, iPod classic, iPod nano or iPod touch, but unless you're planning to sue Apple yourself, there's no penalty for a legitimate claim. Update: RealNetworks has chipped in to let us know that it's "not involved in any way" with the lawsuit, which is actually an independent complaint centered around the Rhapsody users themselves. RealNetworks hasn't embroiled itself in a legal fight with Apple to date.
Apple said to be using FairPlay DRM for iBookstore
Well, it looks like anyone hoping that books on Apple's iBookstore would be as DRM-free as music is on iTunes may be in for a bit of disappointment, as the Los Angeles Times is now reporting that Apple will be making its own FairPlay digital rights management available to any book publishers that wish to use it. Of course, that shouldn't come as a huge surprise considering that Apple still uses FairPlay for movies and TV shows sold on iTunes -- not to mention apps -- and it even still technically supports it for music as well, although it's pretty safe to assume Apple won't be going back down that road anytime soon. For its part, Apple is unsurprisingly staying mum on the matter, but March is fast approaching, so we should know for sure soon enough.
iPhone apps pirated, shared -- but not GPL'd
Seeing as Apple's FairPlay DRM has already been cracked for music and movies, it's not at all surprising that people are starting to poke holes in the FairPlay-based iPhone App Store. The first loophole is pretty simple, since it doesn't appear that FairPlay links the iPhone hardware to specific Apple IDs: just log into iTunes from any of the machines authorized to use your account, and every app you've purchased will be available for free re-downloading to any attached phone. Since music and movies wrapped in FairPlay can be transferred to unlimited iPods and iPhones, we're guessing this little trick will work indefinitely, but we wouldn't depend on it.
