Apple Not Guilty In Huge Case -- December 16, 2014

Tweeting now: Jury finds Apple not guilty of harming consumers in iTunes DRM case; says iTunes 7.0 was a 'genuine product improvement' - @verge

Over at MacRumors:

Jury deliberations for the iPod antitrust lawsuit Apple faced in court last week began on Monday, and it appears the jury has already reached a verdict just a day later. As reported by The Verge, the jury has sided with Apple, finding the company not guilty of harming consumers with anticompetitive practices.

In the class action lawsuit, the plaintiffs argued that Apple had deliberately crippled third-party music services by locking iPods and iTunes to its own ecosystem, which in turn artificially raised the price of Apple's products. At issue was a specific iTunes 7.0 update that disabled the DRM workarounds put in place by RealNetworks, a competing music service, allowing its music to be played on the iPod. 

Yes, Virginia, this is huge.

I don't know if you've ever served on a jury on a big case, but after weeks of hearing testimony, the jury begins to deliberate. The first thing the jury needs to do is get organized, select a foreman, go over the rules of a jury, determine seating arrangements, and order lunch. To come to a verdict in one day suggests they must have done all that and then took a preliminary vote -- when it was unanimous, the foreman must have said, "that's a wrap."