Judge Rules Steve Jobs' iPod Deposition Video Won't Be Released to Public

If you were hoping you'd get to see Steve Jobs' video testimony that was such a key part of the recent iPod antitrust trial, District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers wants you to cast those hopes aside. Members of the media had been insisting on getting access to the tape despite significant opposition from Apple (and the plaintiffs, for that matter), but the judge ruled that Jobs' testimony will be treated as any other live testimony.

In other words, since live testimonies aren't recorded and released to the media, then Jobs' testimony shouldn't be either. The video itself was taped in 2011, just months before Jobs' death in October of that year, and it represents one of the Apple co-founder's last appearances on film. In it, Jobs states his reasons for Apple's air-tight digital rights management system, claiming that it was to ensure the numerous contracts the company had signed would remain valid. The fact that users couldn't play music for stores like RealNetworks, Jobs says, was just "collateral damage."

The video reportedly shows Jobs in an "snarky" mood, and at one point he reportedly (via CNN) asks if RealNetworks still exists. Jobs also proved evasive for most of the interview, saying things like "I don't remember" and "I don't recall" 74 times throughout the testimony. Jobs' physical condition was rapidly deteriorating at the time, but the video reportedly shows his mind was as sharp as ever.

Rogers said that her decision might have been different if Apple hadn't been so strongly opposed to the release, but there are sound legal grounds for keeping it off the public record as well. Releasing Jobs' testimony would provide a precedent in which other taped testimonies by high-profile figures could be broadcast beyond the court, thereby possibly dissuading similar individuals in the future from providing their own testimonies if they thought they'd be released to the press.

Transcriptions of the video are, in fact, in the public record, and Judge Rogers found these adequate.

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