DVD (and DoubleTwist) Jon publishes his Apple Anti-trust Subpoena

It looks like Apple’s lawyers might be in court for anti-competitive iTunes/iPod ecosystem related fun and one of the star witnesses in the plaintiff’s stable is none other than DVD Jon.  Yes, the very same guy who decoded the DVD encryption and also builds an application that circumvents Apple’s iTunes hardware restrictions.  He also put an ad for his software on Apple’s flagship San Francisco store.

Johansen today posted the Subpoena to his site.

It is interesting because this is a 2005 case (SLATTERY v. APPLE COMPUTER, INC) in which:

Plaintiff Thomas Slattery’s lawsuit claims Apple configured the iPod so that it will play only iTunes files and not digital music files from competing vendors of online music. Apple has also encoded its iTunes files so they will only play on the iPod and not any other digital music player, the complaint says.

The suit says another company, RealNetwork, reverse engineered Apple’s iTunes format and began selling iPod-compatible music files for 45 cents each, compared with the iTunes price of 99 cents each. Apple quickly changed its software code so that the RealNetwork files would no longer play on the iPod, Slattery says.

The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, seeks certification as a class action.

…interesting because Palm is currently having similar complaints about Apple.

The published letter to DVD Jon below:

Apple Antitrust Subpoena http://d.scribd.com/ScribdViewer.swf?document_id=18466587&access_key=key-1p5ul7t325wjhkbybz3c&page=1&version=1&viewMode=