There are reports of a lawsuit against Apple over their lack of DRM-WMA files capabilities, this feature while is available on the iPod has been disabled; this type of file can be converted at the iTunes website, apparently. The woman, who lives in San Diego County, California brought this lawsuit against the Apple Corporation and the it claims that the technology giant has been and is currently employing unfair trade practices. This particular lawsuit is considered to be a somewhat case in some quarters as there are other means of loading these types of files once converted, for example from A ripped cd using iTunes in order to transfer them to the iPod. There are also DRM free music which may be found on several websites and be drug to iTunes to transfer them to the iPod.
For this to be a true case that could be prosecuted and won would be if Apple were violating the antitrust laws. This would be if Apple manufactured the iPod to only be capable of loading music that is available from iTunes only and no other place.
This is not the case, songs can be found in more places than iTunes and so Apple does not hold a monopoly on the iPod music that is available to iPod owners.
More news about the outcome of this case will certainly be found when the case heads to court.
In legal and technology related news, an antitrust lawsuit has been filed in California on December 31 charging Apple with monopolistic behavior in the digital music market. While the case looks weak, it also draws attention to some questionable Apple policies)
The superb writer David Zeiler of the ‘Baltimore Sun’ online newspaper brought up some excellent points and made some very interesting observations when he discussed
the iTunes-iPod lawsuit on his bog recently. he is an expert regarding th Apple Corporation (and also, it seems a critic of it. But his journalism is always excellent
and thought provoking at the same time. Of course we all know by now that the legal suit in question claims that the Apple Corporation has used it’s powerful position in the digital music market heirarchy to shut down it’s competitors in a number of different ways.
One way is the iPod’s withdrawal of support concerning Microsoft’s Windows Media Audio format, in contrast to most other digital music players and online download stores.
All in all, this antitrust lawsuit filed in California appears rather weak on the surface to some insiders and experts, but it also has the effect of drawing critical attention to certain Apple corporate policies.
One way that the technology giant allegedly freezes out it’s competitors is in the stubborn refusal to license the FairPlay DRM that it uses in the AAC-formatted songs that are available on the iTunes Store, so that the competitors do not have the possibility of offering FairPlay-compatible gadgets or songs. By the way if you are based in the southern California area and you require a good dui or perhaps Los Angeles Car Accident Attorneys then you should by all means call the good offices of Ehline Law. Their reputation in this field is stellar. So whether you require a los angeles drunk driving lawyer, a dui lawyer torrance or any other los angeles criminal defense attorneys these guys can help. Now back to the article…………Apple’s policies in business may at first glance seem unethical but whether or not is is actually, technically illegal remains to be seen in a court of law. David noted how the legal suit, on more than one occasion,
refers to how Apple’s behavior has restrained “what little competition remains in the digital music markets.” He said this type of thing is common in virtually every type of industry that there is. He then made note of
of the Microsoft Corporation and their Zune player last year and Amazon.com with its MP3 download store just this past fall 2007. If Apple had total control of the digital music market, he contends, then new players would simply not be entering it.
The corporation has a lot of competition, as it turnss out. As a matter of fact, he notes, buyers may rather easily avoid Apple’s products and services if they wish to. It has been glaringly obvious for many years that the majority of people choose Apple’s items since they prefer them and
not since they think that they have little real choice, which is what the suit may be trying to spin, in his opinion. In any case, the
legal case in question refers to how iPod owners are made or “forced” to purchase songs from the iTunes internet site, and that buying FairPlay AAC songs from that store “locks” that them to the iPod, as the songs may not be played on any other mp3 player.First of all, as David observently points out,
the Amazon e-Store sells MP3s with no DRM which may play on any playerand in fact produced by any vendor. In addition, he says, the iPod may play unprotected MP3s songs which are obtained from any source at all.
Second of all, David writes, Steve Jobs said in his “Thoughts on Music” essay the previous year that only some three percent (amere three percent for goodness sakes!) of the songs on the run of the mill iPod is bought from the iTunes e-commerce website.
In fact the majority of iPods are filled to the brim with songs that are “ripped: from the owner’s own song archives. Even the FairPlay stuff purchased from iTunes, he says, may be burned to a CD and then re-ripped back to a computer in a DRM-free format.
All in all, he beleives that Apple will keep its iPod-iTunes-FairPlay fence intact for as long as it possibly can. This gaps gives the corporation a certain plausable defense against exactly these type of lawsuits, yet the continued existence helps to maintain the business model. Nonetheless, he says,
it smacks od being just a tad unethical and not particularly consumer-friendly – which are aspects that Apple has been known to espouse.
In safety technology news as initially reported by the CNN money network website,
The FuelCell Energy Corporation, which is a top producer of high-efficiency, super-clean power plants for commercial, industrial and utility customers, today announced that its DFC1500MA(tm) has received 3 certifications which confirm the 1.2 MW power plant meets the Golden State’s
emission regulations as well as complies with both requirements
for connecting to power grids plus federal safety standards. As it stands now,
this is definately the biggest of the various Distributed Generation Power Plants which are currently Certified for the California Market. The firms
system has met the relatively strict (and rightly so) standards as set by the California Air Resources Board while at the same time being certified by
the Rule 21 Working Group for specific standards for interconnecting with the state’s power grid infrastructure. In addition to that, approval was granted
by the organization known as CSA International for compliance of the srather substantial safety standards. As it stands now, these particular
power plants can be located quite near to where the electricity is most urgently required since they significantly lower noise, NOX, SOX and matter
related to more common methods of electrical generation like combustion engines, as an example. Furthermore, these power plants are capable of running on a somewhat broad assortment
of fuels such as biofuels. These are excellent since they are totally renewable. Also, they can substantially improve overall efficiency levels through combined heat and power applications
Tech News World recently ran an interesting story about the internet and how the law is unfolding regarding this medium
and how various laws and regulations tend to generally follow major innovations such as the World Wide Web as societies try to come to grips with how the technology in question can
be best used by the world.
Thus far courts have seen legal subjects which pertain to the World Wide Web covering freedom of speech issues, security breaches, fraud, waste, abuse, intellectual property rights, patent law, privacy issues, telecommunications, copyright infringements, contractual law and even tort reform.
Given the sweeping impact the world wide web has had around the globe, especially since 1992,
it is really not too surprising that the innovations dealing with web technologies are proving to be extremely fertile soil for various relevent new laws, regulations, legal precedents as well as interpretations of existing case law as it stands.
In an article entitled ‘The Internet and the Law: Work in Progress’ it was discussed how
the case of Columbia Pictures Industries v. Justin Bunnell was somewhat groundbreaking in this regard.
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In this case Central District of California Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Chooljian ruled that information that is stored in a computer server’s random access memory (RAM)
is “electronically stored information” for purposes of a rule, included in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which is part of a set of civil law procedures that help to standardize the
discovery of electronically stored information. The court ruled that they should start logging certain servers’ RAM dat in addition to producing their logs. This possibly landmark ruling “raises potentially
endless legal and metaphysical questions by opening the door to discovery of data in RAM,” according to Clifford Davidson, an associate in a Los Angeles Law firm office.
In another major case the music industry’s effort through the Library of Congress’s Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) and it’s agents to raise royalty rates to a point that independent webcasters say threatens the viability of web radio as a whole.
The Infoworld News Portal has reported on their website that additional legal defeats have been foethcoming for the rather sneaky
(appropriately named) Sneakwrap Terms. The California court system has decided not to enforce the 1-sided mandatory arbitration clauses. Shortly afterwards came news of a different legal case,
Gatton vs T-Mobile, which may prove to be the largest defeat of all against unjust arbitration clauses. T-Mobile was trying to block class action lawsuits from their customers on various issues
like non-prorated early termination fees as well as handsets locked into using the T-Mobile cell phone service. Under the mandatory arbitration clause and a ban on class-action lawsuits in T-Mobile’s contracts, the firm tried to
claim that these lawsuits should be summarily dismissed by the judge and the customers should have to submit to arbitration.
The California appeals court decided that “the high degree of substantive unconscionability arising from the class action waiver rendered the arbitration procedure unenforceable.”
They also cited a major California Supreme Court decision a couple of years back which basically stated that” … are unconscionable under California law and should not be enforced.”
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This ruling that went against the T-Mobile corporation does carry the possibility of making it much more difficult for all of the vendors to use both arbitration as well as class-action waivers to escape answering for their actions.
Firthermore, another decision by a higher court goes much further than that,
calling into question the core sneakwrap licensing tactic whereby the vendor may edit terms of the “contract” simply by posting changes to their website.
The recent decision by the United states Court of Appeals 9th Circuit in Douglas verses Talk America generally follows the same overall outline as the court in the T-Mobile case, except that it also looked at a wider issue.
The EMediaWire online news network has reported on it’s website that
a major event in the modern history of Publishing has occured with the advent of a new ‘Smart’ Navigation System as well as
an Online Distribution from some 70 Law related weblogs.
It has a sizeable selection of essays from the legal blogosphere as well and also offers
a whole new method for law related companies to obtain information about management & technology. For instance Bluebeam Software of Pasadena, California contributed two Problems.
In addition to that, it allows attornies to search out relevent legal weblogs quite quickly. In fact over one hundred thousand weblogs
are created each and every day in the online world, quite a few of which pertain to the arena of law and attorneys.
Obviously, many if not most attorneys just don’t have the spare time to read each legal weblog that is relevent to their practice, even though they might want to do so.
And yet so many weblogs that are out there have superb articles that they could use.
As a quick legal aside if you need to find Los Angeles quadriplegia and paraplegia attorneys
by all means take a look at Ehline Law. They are a cut above the rest.
Some 50% bigger than its predecessor, BlawgWorld 2007 has thought-provoking essays from seventy-seven top industry weblogs.
Handpicked by each specific blogger, they provide a sort of portal into their weblogs, making it fairly simple for busy attorneys to find out which ones merit attention
and which ones don’t cut the mustard.
