Apple Tried To Delete Music On Your iPod That You Didn’t Get From Apple

A new lawsuit being heard says that Apple tried to delete songs on customers’ iPods that they acquired from non-iTunes or non-Apple sources. According to BBC News, the class action lawsuit is being brought by both individuals and businesses, and is being heard in a U.S. district court in California. The court case will include testimony from Steve Jobs recorded six months before his death.

The plaintiffs in the case accuse Apple of abusing a monopoly position in the digital music player market. Potentially, if the company loses, Apple could be forced to pay out over a billion dollars in damages.

Users of iTunes containing music not purchased from iTunes between 2007 and 2009 were prompted by the service to restore their devices to factory settings each time they tried to sync them with iTunes. According to lawyers, in effect, Apple was attempting to “delete” any and all non-iTunes music from the devices of users in the process.

Apple has stated that the prompt to restore devices to factory reset was a security measure, and completely legitimate. Apple’s security director, Augustin Farrugia, says that Apple’s attempt to keep devices clear of non-iTunes music was done to protect users from hackers and malicious content. Farrugia continued, saying the error message that appeared when iTunes users that had non-iTunes music on their devices was vague because Apple did not want to “confuse users” with too much information.

Testimony from former Apple chief executive Steve Jobs was presented in the case. In an email from 2005, after learning that one of Apple’s rival companies was about to introduce a digital music program that would allow users to buy songs from anywhere and play them on iPods, Jobs wrote the following.

“We may need to change things here.”

Apple is accused of propagating an internal campaign to keep Apple’s iPods clean from music that was not purchased from the iTunes store. By updating the iTunes and iPod software to block music sold from competitors, Apple operated a “closed system,” which froze their rivals out of the market.

A Stanford economist will appear later in the trial, reports say, who will claim that Apple inflated the price of iPods by nearly $350 million.

What do you think? If Apple froze out its competitors as the lawsuit claims, were they breaking the law? Or was Apple just exercising its right to maximize its security by preventing other companies from “hacking” into their program and providing music that could be used on iTunes? What do you think about Apple?

[Image via Albawalba]