Apple copies Microsoft tactics in Itunes row

APPLE IS USING its legal muscle to prevent competitors from using its Itunes digital juke box.

Currently, the Itunes store accounts for four out of five songs sold on the internet in the United States and it seems that Apple wants to keep it that way.

The outfit has written to the operator of website bluwiki.com and told him to remove postings that talked about ways to work around a special Apple file, known as ItunesDB.

Rivals need to tinker with ItunesDB for their software to work properly with the Iphone and Ipod touch, both of which have protected versions of ItunesDB.

Sam Odio, operator of bluwiki, did what Jobs' Mob demanded only because he said he lacked the money to take on the fruit-themed toymaker.

He told AP that, when a lawyer calls you up and implicitly threatens litigation that would bankrupt your little project, you obviously have no choice but to comply.

Technology rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation has taken on Odio as a non-paying client to see if it can protect his freedom to post.

Fred von Lohmann, a lawyer for the Foundation, said that Apple's threats were a pure attack on interoperability.

Until a year ago, Ipods worked well with many kinds of music software but Apple has been spending a lot of time and money adding software which has no purpose other than to prevent applications other than Itunes from working.

Von Lohmann said the courts have made it clear that others have a right to write software for Ipods and Iphones.

Apple seems to have copied Microsoft in its strategy. It owns the biggest digital jukebox which it links to its hardware. If someone tries to make a product that threatens either, Apple sues to protect its monopoly.

Since few people have the cash to stop Apple lawyers, the monopoly is maintained. µ

L'Inq
AP