The Wall Street Journal says Apple is in hot water due to a huge unauthorized media file purge which occurred between 2007 and 2009. If you were one of those people attempting to sync your iPod containing non-Apple files you would have noticed an error message and a “restore factory settings” prompt. After the restore, the music in question vanished forever…..but here comes the clincher. Attorneys declared last week Wednesday during a 10-year-old antitrust lawsuit against the tech giant that music was regularly deleted on user’s devices that were downloaded from iTunes competitors.

Apple Lawsuit for Deleting User Songs From iTunes Competitors Underway

Apple Lawsuit for Deleting User Songs From iTunes Competitors Underway

Patrick Coughlin, attorney for plaintiffs in a class-action suit who are seeking $350 million in damages said:

“You guys decided to give them the worst possible experience,”

Experts say that this figure could be tripled, per antitrust laws, if the U.S. District Court in Oakland rules against Apple.

Apple security director Augustin Farrugia had a very predictable reply to what is seen as a deliberate misleading problem whereby Apple omitted to communicate their policy. Drum roll please….and he said:

“We don’t need to give users too much information.”

We don’t want to confuse users.”

—- A representative for Apple declined to comment —-

Apple HQ

Apple HQ

The Wall Street Journal shared the following about the purge:

“When a user who had downloaded music from a rival service tried to sync an iPod to the user’s iTunes library, Apple would display an error message and instruct the user to restore the factory settings, Coughlin said. When the user restored the settings, the music from rival services would disappear, he said. Apple directed the system “not to tell users the problem,” Coughlin said.”

Apple fired back stating that their actions were legitimate security measures due to hackers with names like “DVD Jon” and “Requiem” who was responsible for Apple’s “very paranoid” approach to protecting iTunes.

iTunes

iTunes

The Wall Street Journal says:

“Updates that deleted non-Apple music files were intended to protect consumers from those system break-ins. ‘The system was totally hacked,’ he said.”

Contrary to what was mentioned as their defense, the Rollingstone also chimed in with some details about their so-called strategy to protect themselves.

Here is what they had to say:

“Evidence from the trial suggests Jobs and Apple were aggressive about limiting iPods and iTunes to the computer giant’s exclusive services. In a 2005 e-mail, after finding out that a competitor was on the brink of allowing music fans to play songs from other services on iPods, Jobs told an employee: “We may need to change things here.” Two years earlier, he’d e-mailed, “We need to make sure that when Music Match launches…they cannot use iPod.”

The war rages on! Was this another shifty security breach in the Apple camp or are they just deliberately trying to monopolize the market?