Apple sued over iTunes

Californian Thomas Slattery is suing the Cappercino based outfit for breaking antitrust laws by only allowing iTunes to work with the iPod. He claims the company is illegaly freezing out competitors.

The suit was filed on Monday in the US District Court in San Jose. Slattery claims that as an iTunes customer he was "forced" to buy an iPod if he wanted to take his music with him.

Basically his case is that a single product brand like iTunes is a market in itself separate from the rest of the online music market. According to court papers he claims that Apple has unlawfully bundled, tied, and leveraged its monopoly in the market for the sale of legal online digital music recordings to thwart competition in the separate market for portable hard drive digital music players, and vice-versa.

Behind the scenes it appears that Slattery has a bit of an Open Source agenda. He claims that Apple turned an open and interactive standard into an artifice that prevents consumers from using the portable hard drive digital music player of their choice, even where players exist that would otherwise be able to play these music files absent Apple's actions.

Slattery points out that Apple has aggressively pursued those who had provided a work-around to Apple's FairPlay DRM to let songs purchased from other online music stores play on the iPod.

Last year it also blocked technology from music rival Real Networks that made downloads from its online music store compatible with any other portable media player, including Apple's.

The full story of Apple facing the music can be found here.