InformationWeek keeps us up to date with the knockout important news again – this time with another lawsuit about someone is whining about iPods
An antitrust lawsuit filed against Apple on Dec. 31 charges the company with maintaining an illegal monopoly on the digital music market.
Okay, as long as we remember that monopolies are not illegal in of themselves but abuse of a monopoly in order to gain strength in other markets is what got Microsoft convicted.
the complaint takes issue with Apple’s refusal to support the Windows Media Audio format. “Apple’s iPod is alone among mass-market Digital Music Players in not supporting the WMA format,” it states, noting that America Online, Wal-Mart, Napster, MusicMatch, Best Buy, Yahoo Music, FYE Download Zone, and Virgin Digital all support protected WMA files.
InformationWeek agrees with me that it’s a vacuous claim considering the choice in DRM-free tracks available now. All of which will play on iPod. Why should I (and I mean we, as Apple’s customers, have to pay an extra few dollars on products so they can support Windows Media Audio?).
As an aside, why the hell doesn’t she just buy one of these Mass Market Players and fuck off?
The lawsuit then dips into fantasyland:
charges Apple with deliberately designing its iPod hardware to be incompatible with WMA. One of the third-party components in iPods, the Portal Player System-On-A-Chip, supports WMA, according to the complaint. “Apple, however, deliberately designed the iPod’s software so that it would only play a single protected digital format, Apple’s FairPlay-modified AAC format,” the complaint states. “Deliberately disabling a desirable feature of a computer product is known as ‘crippling’ a product, and software that does this is known as ‘crippleware.’ “
I don’t care about whether they did this – what I’m wondering about is whether it is actually illegal to do this? I don’t think so. If Apple haven’t paid Microsoft for use of their WMA codecs then I’m pretty sure they legally have to disable the WMA decoding?
To tie this into an injury to consumers, they claim:
Apple’s pricing is “monopolistic, excessive, and arbitrary,” citing how a wholesale $5.52 price difference between 1-Gbyte ($4.15) and 4-Gbyte ($9.67) NAND flash memory modules results in a $100 retail price difference between 1-Gbyte iPod Nano and a 4-Gbyte Nano.
Yes, it’s easy to quote flash memory prices today and wonder why there was such a difference in products pricing. If you don’t like, don’t buy it. I don’t think it’s illegal to overcharge anyway?
So what?
I’d like to know why Microsoft hasn’t been taken to task for their PlaysForSure crap which won’t play on iPods, Zunes or Macintosh computers. I suspect the reason is : No one gives a flying fuck.
Like so many iPod related lawsuits it boils down to:
Wahhhhh, I want to buy an iPod but it’s too expensive so I’m going to make up a spurious lawsuit and see if I can get one for free.