Apple is being sued for $350 million in damages after it was revealed that the company actively deleted songs downloaded from competitors onto iPods.
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It was revealed during a court hearing in Oakland, California, that between the years 2007 and 2009 Apple had forced its users to unwittingly delete songs uploaded to their iPods from services other than iTunes. The tech giant reportedly achieved this by displaying an error message when users tried to sync their iPod to iTunes, telling them to restore the device to factory settings. Attorney Patrick Coughlin claimed that when the user would perform this action, the device would remove all of the tracks downloaded using competing music services.
Apple’s defense is a rather timid one, with security director Augustin Farrugia saying: “We don’t need to give users too much information, we don’t want to confuse users.” Now the company is on the receiving end of a huge lawsuit, though they refuse to comment on the details of the legal battle outside of the courtroom.
The lawsuit alleges that this is an example of Apple attempting (and succeeding) to stifle competition in the digital space, though Apple has argued that the decision was made to combat piracy, with hackers going by the name of “DVD Jon” and “Requiem” making the company protective over its iTunes service, thus leading to them laying down a set of procedures to ensure that the service wouldn’t be made obsolete by pirated music.
The trial is set to continue later this week, with video footage of Steve Jobs expected to be played in the courtroom.
