Apple Antitrust suit for tying iTunes to iPod
Posted by Ray @ 2:21 am(I don’t know how I missed this one; I think I was still recovering from the New Year).
Though I support Apple in many things, this is one of the few areas I disagree with: the issue of Digital Rights Management. Everyone knows if you buy a song from iTunes, it is protected by Apple’s proprietary FairPlay DRM, and the only portable music player that can play it is an Apple iPod. Of course, you can always bypass the DRM, but that’s illegal under current laws. Plus Apple updates their DRM with each new iteration of iTunes, meaning you have to keep up.
The basic gist of the plaintiff’s complaint is that Apple is acting in an anti-competitive manner by tying its iTunes Music Store to the iPod. Tying is a term in competition law refering to behaviour where a company forces you to use product A together with product B.
In the context of this lawsuit, the plaintiff is alleging that Apple forces you to buy Apple products, not on their own merits, but by their DRM schemes. If you’ve bought music from iTunes, they are only playable on an iPod, thereby forcing the customer to buy an iPod. Conversely, if you have an iPod, you are “locked in” with Apple’s iTunes store, because you can’t play music with incompatible DRM schemes.