An antitrust suit brought by iPod users who claimed that iTunes prevented them from playing music fils from other online emporiums has been thrown out by a jury, according to Rolling Stone.
"We created iPod and iTunes to give our customers the world's best way to listen to music," Apple said in a statement. "Every time we've updated those products-and every Apple product over the years —we've done it to make the user experience even better."
As Music Times reported earlier, allegations against Apple claimed that the company was more aggressive than simply blocking other music from being played. One claim was that a prompt to "restore factory settings" would actually remove foreign files from the computer.
Holes began to appear in the case as several of the plaintiffs drew scrutiny for their claims. Two were found to have not bought iPods during the 2006-'09 period as they claimed and were hence thrown out of the case. Regardless of others represented by the case, these examples shed a less-than-trustworthy light on the rest of the lawsuit.
Essentially, the only proof the plaintiffs had to prove that Apple was engaged in crooked competition was a series of e-mails from nearly a decade ago. One featured founder Steve Jobs stating that when Yahoo Music launched its MusicMatch system during 2003, that Apple needed to make sure its users "cannot use iPod." There's little doubt that Jobs, a notoriously intense competitor, would stretch the limit as far as possible but no proof was offered that he actually did.
Apple can breathe easier now. The plaintiffs were seeking upward of $350 million for their cause.
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