Capping a trial that saw post-mortem testimony from Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and class-action plaintiffs dwindle to one, a former iTunes engineer testified that his company released a version of its music client that was designed to block 100 percent of rival applications.
Presiding Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers expects to send the case, which is being tried in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, to the jury this week for deliberations as the decade-long suit against Apple's use of digital rights management (DRM) on iTunes nears its end.
A class action lawsuit seeks $350 million in damages from the Cupertino, Calif., tech company, alleging that Apple violated California's antitrust laws when it used iTunes to block rival software between September 2006 and March 2009. If the lawsuit is successful, the settlement amount could triple based on California law. The plaintiffs also allege that iTunes was programmed to delete music acquired from rival services, without notifying users that the content would be erased.
During the case's final testimony on Dec. 12, Rod Schultz, a former iTunes engineer, stated that he was a part of an Apple project that sought to "block 100 percent of non-iTunes clients." Schultz, who left Apple in 2008, is said to have indicated that he was an unwilling witness.
Apple has asserted that its use of DRM in iTunes was a measure meant to prevent users from syncing malicious and pirated content to their iPods.
In an academic paper published in 2012, Schultz detailed Apple's efforts to use highly sophisticated DRM to thwart pirates and to dominate the market for digital music. The plaintiff sought to submit the paper as evidence in the case, though the judge wouldn't allow it.
Schultz suggests in the paper that Jobs was trying to spin a favorable strand out of the music industry's then-pending decision on how it would proceed with the use of DRM. Jobs' and Apple's motive, Schultz suggests, was to paint the music industry's quandary as a victory for the company, Schultz suggests.
"The truth was that with the power of its DRM Apple was locking the majority of music downloads to its devices, the most import [sic] of which was the iPod. The music industry didn't go DRM free because they hated DRM; they went DRM-free because they were fearful of the leverage Apple was gaining with their iTunes + FairPlay + iPod combination [sic]," stated the paper (PDF).
