Apple Wins Antitrust Lawsuit Over Deleting Users’ Songs From iTunes

A federal jury took three hours to end a near decade-long battle between Apple and consumers by deciding that Apple's iTunes software did not block songs downloaded from outside sources from playing on iPods from 2006-2009. According to reports from The New York Times, the jury ended up declaring the the version of iTunes that came out in 2006 improved the quality of iPods rather than restrict them.

Following the jury's decision, Apple released a statement saying, "We created iPod and iTunes to give our customers the world's best way to listen to music. Every time we've updated those products--and every Apple product over the years--we've done it to make the user experience even better."

The initial lawsuit, in which plaintiffs were seeking $350 million in damages, claimed that iTunes would ask users to restore iPods to their factory settings, thus deleting songs from other sources.

"There's not one piece of evidence of a single individual who lost a single song, not even a complaint about it," said William Isaacson, Apple's lead lawyer in the case. "This is all made up at this point."

[Rolling Stone / The New York Times]
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