French online music store Virgin Mega has filed a complaint against Apple Computer, claiming that the company’s refusal to license the copy protection technology used in its iPod is harming competition.
The action was filed with the French Competition Council in June and disclosed along with several other legal matters on Thursday as part of Apple’s quarterly filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
My view:
Now - this is absolutely stupid. Why should Apple allow its technology to work with other products when it comes to the iPod? It’s their product, and Virgin Music has no right to try to force itself to gain access to things such as FairPlay that belong to Apple.
I hate incompetent companies that use the court system to force themselves to have access to successful products. I can’t wait till the EU orders Apple to remove its media player…err LCD screen (sorry - got one stupid court ruling messed up with a possibly equally ridiculous court ruling in the future :P)
I read this yesterday and just wanted to throw up.
The fact that Virgin is pulling this kind of thing, so close after Real’s hacking of the iPod just makes you think about how desperate these competing corperations are to crack into the iPod’s buissness.
Apple has every right to hand onto FairPlay, they developed it they have the right to keep it.
Yeah - nobody is stopping virgin from developing its own, better products. I figure a company that makes airplanes as well as music CDs and everything in-between could do something more useful than using the courts
[size=1][color=blue]EDIT: They don’t make airplanes…they just own an airline instead. My bad![/color][/size]
That’s a really stupid thing to do on Virgin’s part. Why can’t they just realize that Apple is really good at making software/hardware, and that they spent alot of time making this protection for themselves, so their product would have an advantage over others, not so they could sell away potential money to their competitors.
I think everybody is just getting pissy about how the iPod is getting so much attention. I read in a Time magazine that 49% of the owners of some MP3 player own an iPod. So now instead of simply competing with Apple, these companies are blatantly trying to copy the iPod’s technology? It just sickens me how close companies try to make their products to the pod. They go from sticking an ‘i’ in front of the product name to using a similar display for their player (maybe with the battery indicator, which is strangely familiar, on the left instead of the right side) to even making it white for crying out loud (col :h:**).
They can compete all they want, but Apple has the upper hand keeping their technology secret. It’s their right, and for Virgin to take the matter into court is just being a sore loser.
The only people the current DRM mess is harming is customers. The main problem is that owning an Apple based music player basically forces you to use iTunes and not another music store. If you think about it, this is harming competition - the fact that Apple are successful in one area helps them to be successful in another.
(of course, apple aren’t unique in this respect Real and M$ and everyone else all do this as well - I’d have this opinion no matter who it was)
The Microsoft media player case is much worse an example of this as M$ have a virtual monopoly over the PC market - Apple only have 49% of the portable digital music market.
Also, Apple doesn’t have too good a case with not-too-sure lawsuits either, so all you apple fanatics should wait a sec before accusing other corporations of filing ridiculous ones.
Real and M$ and everyone else all do this as well - I’d have this opinion no matter who it was)