GristyMcFisty & Feslmogh & RTV71 used our news submit to tell us that Thomas
Slattery a customer of the Apple iTunes music service is suing Apple
because only his Apple iPod will play the songs bought from the
service. Thomas Slattery says that Apple is in breach of various anti
competition laws by refusing to let other music player manufactures
players work with the songs available via the iTunes service. Slattery is
seeking damages from Apple who he has accused of turning an open standard into
and restrictive one. Apple has been employing a technology that makes sure
only songs bought from the Apple iTunes music service work with the Apple iPod
and this is what Slattery is challenging.
According to the lawsuit
Apple has unlawfully bundled tied or leverages it's monopoly in the market to
stop competition in the separate digital hard drive based music player
market and vice versa. Mr Slattery said he had to buy an Apple iPod to use any
of the songs on the iTunes music store. Apple is known to use a different
audio format to its competitors, it uses the AAC format while competitors
use formats such as MP3 or WMA DRM files.
Apple has sold more than
200 Million songs since the launch of its iTunes service and has sold more
than 6 million Apple iPod units and has a market share of 87% of the digital
music player market.
 A user of Apple"s iTunes music service is suing the firm saying it is unfair he can only use an iPod to play songs.He says Apple is breaking anti-competition laws in refusing to let other music players work with the site. Apple, which opened its online store in 2003 after launching the iPod in 2001, uses technology to ensure each song bought only plays on the iPod. Californian Thomas Slattery filed the suit in the US District Court in San Jose and is seeking damages. Key "Apple has turned an open and interactive standard into an artifice that prevents consumers from using the portable hard drive digital music player of their choice," the lawsuit states.
"Apple has unlawfully
bundled, tied, and/or leveraged its monopoly in the market for the sale of
legal online digital music recordings to thwart competition in the
separate market for portable hard drive digital music players, and
vice-versa," the lawsuit said. Mr Slattery called himself an iTunes
customer who "was also forced to purchase an Apple iPod" if he wanted to
take his music with him to listen to.
 A spokesman for Apple declined to comment. Apple"s
online music store uses a different format for songs than Napster,
Musicmatch, RealPlayer and others. The rivals use the MP3 format or
Microsoft"s WMA format while Apple uses AAC, which it says helps thwart
piracy. The WMA format also includes so-called Digital Rights Management
which is used to block piracy. Apple has sold more than six
million iPods since the gadget was launched and has an 87% share of the
market for portable digital music players, market research firm NPD Group
has reported. More than 200 million songs have been sold by the iTunes
music store since it was
launched.
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Firstly he isnt forced to use the iTunes service,
there are plenty of others and the fact that he could have used another
player with any of the competition and the fact that their are plenty of
alernatives / competition will probably see this case kicked out of
court.
Source: BBC News
