Musi Says Evidence Shows Apple Conspired With Music Industry On App Store Ban

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: For millions of music fans, the most controversial app ban of the past year was not the brief TikTok outage but the ongoing delisting of Musi from Apple's App Store. Those users are holding out hope that Musi can defeat Apple in court and soon be reinstated. However, rather than coming to any sort of resolution, that court fight has intensified over the past month, with both sides now seeking sanctions, TorrentFreak reported. For Musi, the App Store removal came as an existential threat, prompting a lawsuit after Musi's attempts to work out the dispute with Apple outside of court failed. The music-streaming app has alleged that the Apple ban did not come at YouTube's request but at the request of Apple's apparent music industry friends who allegedly asked Apple to find a way to get the app removed -- prompting Apple to push YouTube to re-open a supposedly resolved complaint.

In a court filing, Apple claimed that this 'conspiracy theory,' as well as other 'baseless' claims, were 'false and misleading allegations' warranting sanctions. 'Discovery thoroughly disproved Musi's baseless conspiracy theory that Apple schemed to eliminate the Musi app from the App Store to benefit 'friends' in the music industry,' Apple argued. But Musi fired back over the weekend, calling (PDF) Apple's motion for sanctions 'frivolous' and demanding sanctions be ordered instead against Apple for allegedly abusing the sanctions rule as a 'tactic of intimidation and harassment.' Musi noted that Apple's requested sanctions against Musi 'are not appropriate if there is even 'some credible evidence,'' then included internal emails and references to testimony from Apple's own employees that seemingly met this low bar.

Most likely, this part of the dispute will not be settled until July 30, when a hearing is scheduled on the motions for sanctions. Apple is seemingly hoping that the court will agree that Musi's complaint misrepresents the facts and is so misleading that the complaint must be struck entirely, perhaps cutting out the heart of Musi's argument. However, Musi pointed out that Apple previously sought sanctions and withdrew that fight, allegedly recognizing that its bid for sanctions was 'baseless.' To convince the court that this second bid is 'equally frivolous,' Musi shared receipts, attaching internal communications from Apple employees that Apple allegedly worked hard to keep out of the courtroom.

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