Apple was washing "wrong" music from players

Removing songs from competing services can cost a company a billion dollars

During the trials of the anti-monopoly lawsuit, very interesting details surfaced. Lawyers claim that Apple deleted songs purchased outside the iTunes store from iPods.

This statement was made by lawyer Patrick Coughlin, who represents the injured party. According to him , in the period from 2007 to 2009, Apple, in secret from consumers, erased songs downloaded from competing services during a sync with the iTunes library.

It looked like this: a user could download songs from third-party stores, for example, RealNetworks , to his iPod using special programs that bypassed Apple DRM protection without obtaining consent from the owner of the ecosystem.
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When trying to sync iTunes, I looked for “alien” tracks. If they were, the interface required to restore the factory settings, says Coughlin. After the reset, the files were deleted, and the download of non-iTunes songs back was not possible thanks to the updated DRM methods.

Thus, the Apple software hid the real policy of the actions taken, which was aimed at forcing users to stop leaving money in other people's media stores.

In 2006, iPod nano was introduced. He had twice as many memories, and the lineup had five different colors than they were very proud of in Cupertino. But Apple was silent about the new Keybag Verification Code feature, which was not aimed at improving performance, or at improving the graphical interface or sound quality. This function did not allow the client to listen to legally purchased songs in third-party stores, claims plaintiffs lawyer Bonnie Sweeney argues . Changes in versions of iTunes 7.0 and 7.4 are called anti-competition.

The history of this lawsuit began in January 2005, almost 10 years ago. Today, Apple is accused of creating a monopoly by restricting users in a closed ecosystem. The apple giant has sharpened customers into iTunes Digital Prison using DRM called FairPlay .

The interests of individuals and organizations that purchased iPod classic, iPod shuffle, iPod touch and / or iPod nano between September 12, 2006 and March 31, 2009 are protected. This is about 8 million people.

The amount of the claim - 351 million dollars. According to the antitrust laws of the United States, it can potentially become three times as high and exceed a billion dollars.

The figure is not taken from the ceiling: Sweeney led some calculations. Buyers overpay 7.45%, Apple resellers - 2.38%. During this time period, resellers bought approximately 36 million different models of the iPod, spending an average of $ 173.93 per share. Consumers bought 11.9 million units and spent an average of $ 219.15. There are still about 485 thousand sales, which ended with the return or upgrade.

For the end user, the introduction of DRM led to the problem of not being able to listen to their own MP3 files on the iPod, and the content purchased from iTunes could not be used outside of the Apple ecosystem. This prompted the Free Software Foundation in 2006 to launch the Defective By Design campaign.

In turn, Apple representatives argue that such a message and the subsequent removal of "bad" tracks is only a security measure to protect users.

Augustin Faruggia says the warning text was dictated by the fact that "users did not need to give too much information." Apple’s security director said the company “didn’t want to confuse users.”

He also noted that Apple was “very paranoid” in protecting iTunes. To a large extent, this was due to a 2004 Steve Jobs internal email.

After launching RealNetworks in 2006, Harmony in Cupertino began to feel uneasy. Jobs wrote: "Jeff, we may need to change something." “I think we need to talk ... about making simple authentication in 6.0.2 for iPod. Not from the database, but using keybag keys, ”Jeff Robbins wrote to another colleague.

Meanwhile, Jobs and Schiller were preparing a press release. In his early version, Jobs directly accused Real of using hacker techniques and ethics. “I like to compare them with hackers. Mute the part in which their success is described? ”Wrote Schiller. There was nothing to muffle: even after August 2004, when Real sold songs for 49 cents at a cost price of at least 70, Apple lost only a few percent of the market.

The defendant claims that it was the representatives of the music industry who insisted on such a tough security system. Frequent updates were needed to deal with hackers (specific nicknames were named: DVD Jon and Requiem), which found new and new ways to get around restrictions. The other day in court Jobs’s letters and videotapes of 2011 were reviewed, from which one could understand how much Apple was afraid of losing contracts with music labels.

Yes, and with the updates, too, is not so simple, they added not only DRM. For example, in 2006, movies appeared in version 7.0. This was one of the largest updates in the history of iTunes.

Finally, Harmony’s methods of work truly resemble hackers: the program, without Apple’s permission, invaded digital keys and imitated FairPlay actions. New encryption methods in versions 7.0 and 7.4 solved this problem, albeit in such a radical way, due to the deception of the user.

By the way, provided RealNetworks did not testify, because the company is not the injured party in the process. ITunes today does not use DRM for songs.

The trial will continue in a few weeks. Interestingly, among the 8 jurors there was one programmer and two engineers who, judging by the answers to the questions, could have had experience writing code.