Apple sued for not supporting WMA files on iPods
By Jonathan Schlaffer
This wouldn’t be the first time Apple has been sued but this is probably the most frivolous lawsuit brought against the company in recent history, perhaps ever since it was founded.
According to MacWorld, Stacie Somers of San Diego County, California alleges that Apple is involved in “unfair practices” by disabling the WMA playback feature on iPods. Even if it was enabled, iPods would still not be able to play DRM-WMA files and non-DRM WMA files can easily be converted to an iPod friendly format using iTunes.
The suit also goes on to state that the tie-in between Apple’s DRM FairPlay encryption is unlawful because it is only compatible with the iPod.
However, it comes down to the fact that Stacie believes the only way to get music on your iPod is to buy it from iTunes which would, indeed, violate US antitrust laws.
Stacie, it seems, failed to get the memo that you can rip your own CDs using iTunes and transfer them to the iPod or it’s possible to buy DRM free MP3 songs from several sources, including Amazon and drag those files into iTunes for transfer. Apple also offers songs from EMI that are free of DRM in its own iTunes store.
I don’t think this lawsuit has much ground to stand on and if this isn’t tossed out of court on the first day, then, it will probably be tossed out in the first week. Enjoy your 15 minutes of fame, Stacie.
Related:
Entry was posted
on Saturday, January 5th, 2008 at 11:00 am
under 
Print This Post
Read more entries by Jonathan Schlaffer.
Stumble It!
