Apple Seen Putting Early IPod Users in Costly Bind

Once upon a time, Apple Inc. forced customers to give up their iTunes downloads if they switched from the iPod to another digital music player or burn all their songs onto CDs and then re-load them.

Yesterday, a Stanford University economist put a price on those transactions to justify consumers’ demand for more than $1 billion in damages at a jury trial over claims that Apple tried to maintain an illegal monopoly on digital music. The consumers allege that Apple, facing competition a decade ago, changed its technology so that songs it sold worked only on an iPod.