Apple Acknowledges Deleting Songs from Users' iPods Without Notice

Apple may have found glory with the release of the new iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and the iOS 8 operating system, but it still has some demons the company to date is exorcising to date. The latest one in the mix, however, is related to Apple controversially deleting songs from users' iPods.

As far as a bit of history is concerned, between 2007 and 2009, Apple secretly deleted content that iPod owners had downloaded from rival music services. And the information has now come to light via a report by The Wall Street Journal. Now, Apple has indeed acknowledged that the company did remove the songs from the users' devices.

The new admission comes as part of the ongoing class-action antitrust lawsuit that the company is fighting in US District Court of Oakland, California. As of now, the Cupertino-based tech giant has been accused of having violated antitrust law by locking its original iPods to the iTunes ecosystem.

As reported by MacRumors, "According to plaintiff attorney Patrick Coughlin, a user who downloaded music from a competing music service to iTunes and then tried to sync the content to an iPod would receive a nondescript error message."

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It added that the "vague message would advise the iPod owner to restore the device to its factory settings, deleting the music that had been downloaded from a rival service and preventing it from being played."

In Apple's defense, however, security director Augustin Farrugia acknowledged the vague error message and stated that Apple didn't want to "confuse users" by providing them with too much information. On the contrary, the entire procedure was carried out "in an effort to protect consumers from hackers and malicious content."

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As it seems, Apple lawyers have denied any reports that the company competed unfairly in the online music market. Several high-ranking Apple executives are also expected to testify during the trial.

Stay tuned to GizBot for more updates!