4 January 2008 @ 10:04Apple Charged With Online Music Monopoly

InformationWeek writes that on December 31, 2007, a lawsuit was filed against Apple that charges the company with maintaining an illegal monopoly on the digital music market.

The complaint takes issue with Apple’s refusal to support the Windows Media Audio format. “Apple’s iPod is alone among mass-market Digital Music Players in not supporting the WMA format,” it states, noting that America Online, Wal-Mart, Napster, MusicMatch,Best Buy (NYSE: BBY), Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) Music, FYE Download Zone, and Virgin Digital all support protected WMA files.

So Apple chose not to license the WMA format from Microsoft. That is totally within their right to license (or not) particular technologies in their own music players. Apple’s iPods will play MP3 files, the most ubiquitous of all formats, as well as their own FairPlay protected files. Apple chose to license MP3, but didn’t deem WMA is important or even worthwhile. Honestly, I don’t see anything wrong with that.

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