Oh Brother…what next!!!!
Well, this should be interesting. An “unhappy” iTunes user is now suing Apple for antitrust violations, claiming that they broke antitrust laws by only allowing their music to play on iPods — blocking out other music players from the market. It’s unlikely that he’ll win the lawsuit, and honestly, it sounds more like a setup by an Apple competitor than just some individual who feels wronged. The guy in question says he was “forced” to buy an iPod in order to make use of the music he bought on iTunes, but the courts will likely point out that he could have gone to a competing online music store. Of course, what this really highlights is how some of these copy protection issues are building fragmented worlds. How would people react if the CDs they bought at Tower Records could only play on Tower-branded radios? Thanks to the way the industry views intellectual property online, the end result is a lot of competing separate worlds, which actively discourages use.
Originally from Techdirt