It has come to light in an Oakland, CA court hearing that Apple deleted iPod tracks from users who had downloaded tunes from rival music services. This took place between 2007 and 2009.
Patrick Coughlin, attorney for the prosecuting side, stated that users would receive an error message whenever they tried to sync their iPod through iTunes if they had any tracks that were downloaded from other services. The message said that a user would have to restore their factory settings. If they would, the tracks would be deleted by Apple automatically. According to Coughlin, the error mechanism had been purposefully designed so that Apple did not have to admit they did not want competitors’ music on their devices.
Augustin Farrugia, security director at Apple, defended to company. He has stated that no explanation of an error message needed to be given. If each error message would go into great details, it would simply confuse users.
However, the prosecution in the case argues that Apple used the error to stop competition from gaining an upper hand in digital music. They are suing for $350 million. This week, both Phil Schiller and Eddy Cue are expected to testify.
I personally believe that doing this is not really acceptable, mainly due to the fact that deleting user’s music is a direct attack onto the privacy of each one and users can and should be always be able to download music from just about any source.
What do you personally think about this? Was Apple’s practice during that time alright?
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