The year isn't 2007 so you might be surprised to learn that Apple, in 2014, still has a pending legal class action suit regarding iPods and the FairPlay DRM that used to shroud every song sold on iTunes.The lawsuit dates all the way back to 2004 and alleges that Apple in the mid-2000s illegally used DRM to lock in users to the Apple ecosystem by making the cost of switching prohibitively high. The plaintiffs in the case are seeking $350 million in damages.
Last week, US District Judge Yvonne Gonzales Rogers gave the green light (PDF) to sending a long-running antitrust lawsuit against Apple to trial. Plaintiffs in the case say that Apple used its FairPlay DRM system to "lock in" its customers and make it costly to switch to technology built by competitors, like Real Networks. They describe how Apple kept updating iTunes to make sure songs bought from Real's competing digital music store couldn't be used on iPods. As a result of this lock-in, Apple was able to overcharge its customers to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.
With Judge Rogers finding Apple's recent effort to have the case dismissed unpersuasive, the case is slated to go to trial on November 17.
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