Steve Jobs ordered to answer iTunes monopoly questions

Apple CEO Steve Jobs is to undergo two hours of questioning about iTunes and its alleged music-download monopoly.
The summons comes at the order of a federal judge, who rejected Apple's attempts to keep Jobs out of the witness stand.
clicky

Well Real player was a crap bit of software, so it was no great loss. I avoided any Real Player files. Also the DRM was a requirement from music labels, which should cover that aspect.



DRM was a music industry prerequisite and if you had to burn a copy and re rip it you at least had a back up at the same time. Hardly onerous.

Well, he was supposed to be on the edge of death a couple of months ago if you read the tech gossip pages. I guess at that point, if he was ill, they may have filed to keep him off the stand for that reason. However 'all other things being equal' I doubt there's anyone at Apple better suited to being on the stand than Jobs. He's not a geek at all, he's a salesman, possibly even in the classic Malcolm Gladwell sense of the word. That being true, he's likely to be able to handle being questioned much better than say some of the engineers at the company will.

Yes, he's a sales man but he doesn't seem very good at accepting criticism or views contrary to his own (the few times I've seen him in a non-prepared press situation). Court appearances are usually handled by his board minions.

Those aren’t questions engineers could answer properly anyway. An ecosystem like Apple’s has to be designed in such a way that it will maximise sales. Engineers are part of the implementation process, as are the industrial designers, the GUI designers, etc. etc.. The people best places to answer such questions would be those in the decision making process.

Apple didn’t want DRM (didn’t they publish an open letter at the time?). It was forced on them. Note that other companies tried to implement similar restrictions, including Sony’s root kit debacle. I would argue that Apple’s was the least restrictive of those on offer at the time.

You might of missed this sentance.

Hmm... it's a bit of a complicated argument. Yes, Apple had DRM on their sales music which meant they were limited to Apple devices, which were the dominant digital music player of the time. However in actuality so did everybody else. Either 'Plays for sure' or Real's rhapsody system the fact is everyone had DRM because the music companies wouldn't let anyone sell music without DRM at that point. And none of them were immediately interoperable with each other - for example, an iPod couldn't play DRM encoded WMA files either. So as an argument about/against Apple specifically, the existence of DRM per se doesn't hold.

The argument that can be made (and I assume will be) is that Apple chose, off their own bat, to stop other manufacturer's 'translation systems' working with their devices. IIRC, and it is going back a few years, this is what the issue is - Real had rhapsody working in some way with iPods and Apple then issued a firmware update which broke that compatibility. Much like, if you remember, the spat between Apple and Palm when the Pre first launched and could sync with iTunes.

Now, for the case to 'stick', Real (or whoever the plaintiff is) would have to show that the loss of compatibility wasn't incidental to the firmware update i.e. that the firmware update specifically targeted the Real system to disable it. When Apple did this with Palm they were relatively safe because Palm were doing some things that were against the USB spec, so Apple could just say "we're making our devices conform better to the USB spec" and that would be enough wiggle room. I have no idea if the same or similar is true in the case that Real are talking about and frankly I suspect nobody outside Apple does either. TBH, I find it hard to believe Real will be able to prove their case without extensive access to iPad firmware source code & development logs, which I doubt Apple will be willing to let them have and I think it would be pretty unusual for a judge to order it to be handed over, because that remains very valuable IP.

Jon

I have to agree about the DRM. I think that aspect is not worth worrying about. Though the altering the firmware could also be down to the lawyers. Format shifting is something that they have been anxious about for ages.

If Apple have to hand over the relevent documents as part of the discovery process, then they have to (after appealing as much as possible, dragging their heels etc).
Also what you believe is immaterial (no offense), its what the judge/jury can be convinced of. Remember truth is the first casualty in war and court.

Apple (as a company) must be hoping that either Jobs performs well on stand and doesnt have a"moment" or their isnt a smoking gun email ala Gates and crushing all competitors.