Apple Antitrust Case Finds New Consumer Plaintiff 39
An anonymous reader writes Class action against Apple is set to continue after 65-year-old amateur figure skater Barbara Bennett decided she would volunteer to represent consumers in the faltering antitrust case. U.S. district judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers is reportedly satisfied that Bennett qualifies as a class member, telling attorneys that they 'were on the right track.' Bennett offered to volunteer in the case after reading an online news story which suggested that the suit was floundering due to a lack of a named plaintiff after the last plaintiff was disqualified earlier this week.
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If the corporations were actually in violation of tax laws, your statement might be meaningful. If you want corporations to pay more taxes, that's fine. Tell your congresscritter to change the laws. Alleging that they are not paying taxes that the law requires them to pay, however, does not square with the known facts.
Bennett, frequent volunteer (Score:2, Funny)
There she is! Bennett's contributing!
I hate Apple (Score:2, Insightful)
But I hate lawyers more.
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Perhaps you need to re-examine what is important in life, then. Hate is just a waste of life.
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"Hate is just a waste of life."
Good, we need more hate because we certainly need less life on this planet. Let's start with politicians and lawyers, first.
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As long as you people insist upon trying to control what your neighbors do, weaseling out of paying your debts, cheating the people you do business with, and making up your own rules that totally suprisingly favor whatever side you're supporting at the moment, there will be politicians and lawyers.
The politicians are just doing what you tell them to do -- or more specifically, what the
Singles ad? (Score:2, Funny)
Me: single law firm with a pending lawsuit against a deep pockets company. Likes long walks on the beach and watching old movies.
You: a potential plaintiff, looking for a good time and maybe more. Oh yeah, and potential big payout for both of us.
Whatever Apple may have done, shopping for plaintiffs like this just feels wrong.
Courtesy of Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe.
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To reap their planned benefits, the law firm representing the plaintiffs could easily handsomely *pay* the volunteer because if the suit were fall through because of the lack of a plaintiff, then there is no victory and only financial loss.
Bert
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Like there weren't any other competitors around (Score:4, Interesting)
What a bunch of BS. Apple only prevented people from loading third party music on the device they sold, not on everyone's.
That's why I didn't buy one. I don't buy any Apple product because the company limits choice beyond what is reasonable and purely for control purposes. I have no doubt they are telling the truth, that it's because of music deals and iTunes. I can believe that Apple wanted to lock their customers into iTunes and was willing to make such deals.
But I fail to see how this can be an antitrust issue when there were plenty of other choices that we cheaper. It was only an issue for the iDrones out there who couldn't see past their little white cases.
BTW ... my wife had a nano. Hated iTunes. She gave it away 6 months after I gave it to her for Christmas. What a piece of crap software, I should have known better.
Re:Like there weren't any other competitors around (Score:4, Informative)
Only third party music laced with DRM. Normal mp3 files from any source have always worked seamlessly.
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At this point, for most people, there's really no need to use iTunes if you have an iDevice. For my part, I still use iTunes for listening to audio when I'm at my desk, since I'm used to it at this point and don't want to bother learning something new, but even for me all of the tacked-on iDevice management stuff has always made it feel like a bloated piece of crap, so I eagerly ditched using those to manage my iDevices as soon as it became reasonable to do so years ago.
Backups: Use iCloud Backup in Setting
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Neither of those are issues for me.
As I said, because I'm pushing my pictures and videos off my phone immediately, they aren't taking up any space on it. Apps are basically the only thing taking up any space, and it's easy to clean a few out if necessary, though I've never had to purposefully do so (I do delete apps that I don't expect to ever use again, such as games I've beaten already, but I can't recall the last time I deleted apps just to clear up space).
As for a botched upgrade, I still have backups,
We already know this (Score:2)
In the last /. story about this case, Apple DRM Lawsuit Loses Last Plaintiff, but Judge Rules Against Dismissal [slashdot.org] /. story hit the front page then.
, there was a comment that pointed out Bennett as the new plaintiff [slashdot.org]. And that Bennett had become the plaintiff well and truly before that
Real news from the case (Score:4, Informative)
And if you want some real news Former iTunes Engineer Tells Court He Worked to Block Competitors [wsj.com]
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And if you want the real story when you read that, it's "Apple argues – and Schultz agreed in court Friday – that it released many improvements to iTunes, and not isolated changes to stifle competition."
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There's something wrong with the legal system (Score:2)
How can a legal system get so messed up that the lawyers actually need to go looking for plaintiffs during the proceedings?
How is this not grounds for instant dismissal of the case on the spot? I mean I know we have a legal system where you can sue for anything, but I thought that you still had to be somehow related to the case you were suing against.
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As for your PS4 games on Xbox, I dunno, AFAIK you are allowed, or at least not disallowed. I don't know how that'd work exactly. Maybe you want to play them on your microwave oven too. If you can convert the object file formats and the machine instruction sets and solve the different rendering engines, and all the other physical incompatibilities then I'd be willing to bet you could play them.
And then get sued for violating the DMCA.
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Not in this case. The files in question contained Real's DRM. That's why they had to backdoor them. If they were actually standard MP3 files they would have worked without issue, and would still be working today.
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There used to be an adapter [jalopnik.com] to play cassettes in the 8-track players.
Dear Judge, (Score:2)
You'll find your bag of money on the basement level of the parking garage behind the garbage can in the southwest corner.
Sincerely,
The Trial Lawyers
Boring lawsuit (Score:2)
I have two affected devices and don't care. RealNetworks could have offered watermarked, DRM free MP3s like Amazon did eventually and indie labels offered in the day. What would be interesting is a lawsuit to let people load apps from any source on devices they own, regardless of monopoly status of the vendor. Android and Apple's own OSX are proof that this is not a death sentence to the company.
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So, your example is to show that only Samsung is really making profits (HTC and the rest are struggling), and only by carpetbombing the market with hundreds of phones (seriously - Samsung has released 2 new smartphones per week in 2014, and 1 tablet per week).
And your other example is in a market that's declining (Mac sales are declining to stable, but far far less profitable than iOS).
Yeah, it may not be a death knell,
So if... (Score:1)
...there has been this enormous struggle to find a qualifying plaintiff, there cant be that many who really give a damn, can there?
It really seems like this is a class action by lawyers, for lawyers.