apple flavored monopoly?

Apparently someone is suing Apple because they can't play their iTunes purchased songs on non iPod MP3 players.

Honestly, I think this is rather odd that they're suing Apple. If they were too worried about this, they could subscribe to another service like Microsoft's music store. It's not like Apple is the only company that sells music you can play on your MP3 players. Apple does sell music with copy protection built in, but this is mentioned to all users when they sign up for the service. My MP3 player can't play the Microsoft WMA format stuff, so screw them.

If this is a huge concern, try this: use iTunes to burn the crap to a CD, then rip the CD to MP3 files. You haven't broken any laws (except maybe copy protection evasion, but you're not doing it with criminal intent) in doing this, and now you have the files in MP3 format and also in the purchased AAC format.

I haven't heard whether Apple has released information on decoding their AAC copy protection, but I think it's up to the 3rd party MP3 player makers to support this format if they can.

Finally, it's not really a huge deal. You can still play the music for free once you've bought it. The iTunes software is free. Don't bitch. Although there might be a case about not being able to play the music without iTunes. It might be a problem that you can't export the songs if you reinstall iTunes, but I believe they've fixed those two problems.

I'm not a legal authority of any sort, but these are my two cents. It'll be interesting to see how this turns out.

(Link - BBC)