A lawsuit has been filed by Stacie Somers, a resident of San Diego County, California, who bought a 30GB iPod from Target, and who is apparently upset that she has to buy music from iTunes, an alleged monopoly. The complaint is that iPods won’t play audio files protected by Microsoft DRM, and that songs purchased from iTunes can only be played on iPods. (See this InfoWorld story).
This one just ticks me off! For starters, users can indeed by DRM-free music from the likes of Amazon.com (the Amazon.com downloader even seamlessly adds the purchased music to iTunes), and Amazon.com started selling DRM-free music before Stacie filed her ridiculous suit. In addition, Stacie seems to be unaware that she does not have to buy anything from Apple directly at all. She can simple buy any music from anywhere for use with iPods, all she has to do is just buy music CDs!
But even more fundamental is this: No one forced you to buy an iPod, Stacie. Owning an iPod is a choice, a choice you made. You had the choice to not buy an iPod, just like you had the choice to not buy any MP3 player at all. And as you shopped at Target (as opposed to an Apple store) you actually had lots of other choices aside from iPods! So, quit whining, and next time learn about the product you buy before you exercise your own free choice to buy it!
Bottom line, this lawsuit should be tossed out immediately. And if at all possible, the courts should make Stacie Somers reimburse Apple for all costs associated with this stupidity.
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