Between 2007 and 2007 Apple removed music downloaded from competing music services from iPods without permission of the device owners. This has become known during a lawsuit against Apple yesterday, according to the Wall Street Journal.
When an iPod user downloaded music from another music service than Apple's iTunes Music Store and tried to synchronize with the iTunes software, Apple showed the user an error message. Users where then recommended to restore their device to factory settings.
When the factory settings were restored, the music from competing services had disappeared, according to the lawyer of one of the prosecutors. Apple set the system in such a way that users were not informed of the problem.
Augustin Farrugia who is in charge of security at Apple states the company hasn't done anything wrong and calls Apple's actions "legitimate security measures". The company didn't want to inform the users with detailed error messages because they didn't want to give the users too much information because, "it would only confuse them".
During the time this took place Apple was very paranoid about securing iTunes because the system was attacked continuously, according to Farrugia.
