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AOL, Microsoft Squabble Over Control of Online Music
Section8 writes: "As if Microsoft wasn't pushing on so many other fronts already (see Part 1 and Part 2), now it seems that Microsoft is seeking to place itself in total control of what format we use on the Internet to view anything. This article in the Wall Street Journal gives some interesting facts about what Microsoft is trying to do out there. Great quote from AOL rep: "[it is] Microsoft's intention to gain as much control over music on the Internet as they have over operating systems on the computer desktop, and we couldn't accept that"." AOL's merger with Time-Warner has given them greater incentive to not use Microsoft's media format... There's also a report on the AOL/Microsoft talks published by AOL.
Despite what all the naysayers say, I believe we are seeing a shift in Microsoft's support of open standards towards the better. Recently, we saw them embrace the new P3P W3C privacy standard, for example.
As long as they use continue to use open standards (http/html, xml, ogg) to distribute their music, the competitive commercial environment will take care of the rest. If someone believes that Microsoft is distributing money at too high a cost, they can use the same tools to sell music themselves, as any company would do in an open market. The only risk is that Microsoft might try to replace say, html, with their own proprietary system that only runs on Windows. Only then do competitors like AOL and you and me face a serious risk.
I don't use any of their software, but -- who knows -- their services might be good stuff. We all know that most of their endeavours outside software are pretty good (hardware like optical mice, force feedback joysticks, Xbox). Kudos to Microsoft and shame on you if you revert to your proprietary tactics of yesteryear!
now it seems that Microsoft is seeking to place itself in total control of what format we use on the Internet to view anything
That's shocking! What, have they developed some sort of ultra-secret "explorer for the internet" application that can be used to view web pages?
Is there some "media player for windows" that will be provided with every copy of their OSes?
Nexy you'll tell me they have even built an "encoder" of some sort for this strange new audio technology.
Its a good thing AOL has discovered this secret, nefarious plot and warned us all in advance!...
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Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
I just hope that Microsoft doesn't take control of the online porn industry, it's shady enough as is.
Microsoft seems to have decided that it has nothing to fear from the court, and unfortunately it may be correct. However, I prefer to think that the court of appeals hinted that it would not break up the company in order to see how Microsoft behaved once the pressure was off, and that they are taking careful note of the fact that the company is continuing to engage in plainly anticompetitive practices based on its monopoly power.
Tim
So AOL/Time Warner doesn't want Microsoft to control internet media. Probably all we're like to see come out of this is another proprietary format that's designed to limit the consumer's rights and focus on making money for AOL/Time Warner.
...AOL Time Warner has announced an alliance with Red Hat Linux to bundle the Real Audio streaming content software on a bootable CD to its 16 million customers...
(and then I woke up)
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
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AOL owns WinAMP and if M$ wants control over the music file format it might want to fight over WinAMP's ability to play windows media files, and next thing you know the newer version of the windos media audio or video format will be unplayable on winamp. So they may be trying to also get rid of MP# which will never happen. By the way, how come windos is the "choice" of consumers everywhere? Why because the already built computers come with it. And now M$ doesn't even have to pay companies to package windos with their desktops. Compaq Dell and the like can literally screw M$ domination if they packaged their computers with any Linux distro, and the users got used to it.
BTW Netscape 6.1beta1 is now out and it's based on Mozilla 0.9.1 it's a MASSIVE improvement over Netscape 6.01 and 6.0 which were quite frankly a joke, therefore Netscape's not dead yet and if we can get AOL to support Netscape/Mozilla then there's a good future for the browser.
I say we support whichever side looks like they're losing.
bukra fil mish mish
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Monitor the Web, or Track your site!
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
Which of the following is most evil:
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine! =P
As long as we all keep using MP3 (and it's not going to go away) or Open Source altervatives, this will be like two fleas fighting over the dog.
I guess mindshare is everything... and MP3 has it. Sorry AOL/MS.
I will, however, have to reassess the statement that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."
How ironic that since we have a government not interested in enforcing anti-trust law, the major force for promoting competition in the sheep-consumer marketplace is the merged corporate monolith AOL/Time-Warner.
What a world...
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?
I'm not a big fan of either one, personally. While both are nice for watching broadcast media like NASA TV, I don't like the way many sites use them as a "Thou shalt not download" tool on their media (it feels like a TV station trying to prevent me from using my VCR). Especially when they force me to download a proprietary player to view something they could have easily just encoded as an MPG.
(Anybody else miss the days before the banner ad?)
And as far as who I think we should support, I think we should support the idea of both of them mutually driving each other out of business. While Windows wants to make their own music encoding scheme the new standard, AOL/TW is also trying to fuck with on-line music through the RIAA.
All in all, these two companies were in talks to try to divy up markets, deciding how we can and cannot access parts of the internet, while a new MP3 codec was released.
Try Netscape 6.1 PR 1, it's much better than the crappy Netscape 6.0 browser, if you've not tried it, give it a go and let them know what you think (select Help > Feedback Center), even if Mozilla based browsers get a 20% market share it should be enough to encourage webmasters to code to standards and write pages to work anywhere.
Let's not waste this opportunity.
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According to an AOL official close to the negotiations, Microsoft wanted consumer access to RealPlayer disabled, a step that AOL felt would tilt the scales in favor of Microsoft's Windows Media. RealPlayer and Windows Media use rival formats, making content formatted for RealPlayer incompatible with Windows Media.
Does anything seem funny here. If realplayer and M$ Media Player use different incompatible formats, why would M$ not install it. It does not compete with their product. What I am thinking is that there may be a deeper issue here. One is that they would want to reduce the amount of realplayer formatted files on the net. But why, everyone knows that no one will switch to wma's. It will be either mp3's or something else. Not wma's. I don't see windows winning here.
Also I think there is another thing brewing here, although this one is more of a conspiracy theory, but given the XP integrated CD-R copyright protection, and online checking that only 2 copies of same disk can be installed, it is a possibility. Something tells me M$ will force every player to go through the codec system, meaning realplayer would have to use the codec, thus Windows Media would be able to play any format, and since its preinstalled....(fill in rest here). The funny thing is that given the track record of realplayer for win, I don't think that that is such a bad idea.
On the other hand I would hate to see M$ player be the only player, given that it starts sucking more and more, especially in the RAM department.
Remember, when you are downloading MP3's, you are downloading communism!!!
badness 10000
I know that windows users are mindless sheep who can not see the difference between an anti-competitive, innovation hampering, standards breaking company and a normal ma & pop shop but please stop with the 1950's McCarthism commie talk just because one of your friends told you that linux user's where communists :-)
Using and/or developing open source software has nothing to do with communism, it has to do with co-operation and problem solving, computing is not like farming or fast food or some other regular business it is more like a science and a technology that is developing very quickly and is just as important to our evolution as say, modern medicine or energy generation
i for one believe that people should work and co-operate together for the advancement of computing not hide there favorite new advances from other brilliant minds like one would hide their new cheese burger recipe.
I do not believe that proprietary software is "immoral" or "wrong" however i do believe that people working together openly to develop new software technologies and sharing ideas and advancments is a great thing and is much more productive than the proprietary development model.
While i do agree that computing is a great source of income and jobs in this world i also believe it is a great technology and it's continued advancment can not be trusted 100% to companies especially these days when most companies fight each other with lawsuits and illegal practices rather than better products and idea's.
Not to mention that the Internet was developed with *our* tax dollars and depends 100% on open standards and protocols. Changing the formats of the internet to only work with your products is no different that changing a national interstate highway to only work with yoru model of car. that is exactly what microsoft is attempting to do. Also if you knew anything about the law you would know that using a monopoly to try and gain another monopoly is illegal.
I do not appreciate being insulted, and called a communist, especially by a person who obvioulsy has no idea what they are talking about
As long as you write your own damn code you aren't 'forced' into using any license.
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Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
Naysayer checking in here...
.ogg, they can't apply Digital Rights Management to it to make the RIAA happy and they can't control it. ...Well maybe they could if they attempted to 'pollute' it like they did to Java. But why would they bother, they just use their desktop monopoly to force people to use their own Media Player formats by breaking the competitors product. "It ain't done 'til Lotus won't run."
...endeavours outside software...
They are not using open standards to distribute the music, that's the whole point to the article.
The content may be transmitted via TCP/IP, but they are encoding in their own media format (including DRM and being proprietary source just for starters) and trying to kill the Real format.
MS will never do anything with
MS using open standards? I think not. They have subverted or attempted to subvert every single standard they have come near (Kerberos, smart tags, anybody?)
One doesn't trust an addict until they have admitted that they have a problem, apologized/made amends *and* exhibited changed behavior. MS has made no steps whatsoever of this kind. They continue to thumb thier nose at government anti-trust action, lie, deceive and subvert to this very moment.
Well, they don't have a monopoly on endeavours outside software, they are at least required to compete on the merits of the product.
Kudos to Microsoft and shame on you if you revert to your proprietary tactics of yesteryear!
??? Huh? Revert? Yesteryear?
Shame on them? Proprietary tactics? Yup. To this very day. That's what the whole problem is in the negotiations between them and AOL.
And shame on AOL too. They're no angels. They demand proprietary solutions as well. They just don't have quite as large a monopoly to leverage.
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?
This is only true if you are talking about the old internet, the one used by the DoD and the defense industry. That baby was designed for national security and can withstand a nuclear strike. However, the modern internet, optical fiber based, was developed by the major telecommunications companies to increase voice traffic. Data traffic was originally secondary. I seriously doubt the companies like Cisco, Alcatel, and Lucent were using tax dollars to develop their products.
and depends 100% on open standards and protocols
Um, wrong again. Open standards don't really exist in networking or in telecommunications. Every vendor does things differently. The OSI model is NOT widely used and each vendor has its own implementation of what they want to do. Remember IPX? TCP/IP has finally taken over and dominated networking as Novell will now allow a server to run on solely TCP/IP.
Lets get real people.
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We must find the Goldilocks zone.
MS just did, that's the point of the article. And AOL wasn't the one forcing or guilting anything. They wanted to purchase a service from Microsoft, and Microsoft started making demands that AOL reduce the value of their product by removing support for a third party Microsoft competitor's media format. AOL declined and let the matter drop. Where is AOL forcing anything? Are the suing to get their software onto the desktop(they would actually have a valid case because Microsoft's demands are illegal)? No, they're simply letting it drop.
More like "Walmart to have clothing department". Yeah, you never see anything like that in real life. Hell, there's even a McDonald's in the one around here, which is probably a more accurate analogy.
Lemme guess, you're one of those right-wing authoritarian feudalists who call themselves free-market capitalists? You seem to know, but simply not understand, that America Online does not produce an operating system that competes with Microsoft Windows. Neither does Real. Let me repeat that for the thinking-impaired in the audience:
AMERICA ONLINE DOES NOT COMPETE WITH WINDOWS
AMERICA ONLINE DOES NOT COMPETE WITH WINDOWS
AMERICA ONLINE DOES NOT COMPETE WITH WINDOWS
REAL MEDIA DOES NOT COMPETE WITH WINDOWS
REAL MEDIA DOES NOT COMPETE WITH WINDOWS
REAL MEDIA DOES NOT COMPETE WITH WINDOWS
You also seem to be under the delusion that AOL is trying to force their way onto Windows when by all accounts(except yours) that is not the case. Microsoft does not need AOL, Microsoft is not in any danger of going bankrupt if they don't get this deal, Microsoft owns the service that AOL wants. It is Microsoft that holds all the cards, and it is one of Microsoft's extra-market demands that is the sticking point in the deal, and it is AOL that chose not to play by Microsoft's rules.
I'm not sure that any of this is really news - at least it's not new. Microsoft has been battling to get a foothold for their music transport format for quite some time now. That they have a relationship with AOL is CERTAINLY NOT NEWS. That they behave as if their windows desktop space is a comodity to be bargained with shouldn't be news to anyone at all. There have been a number of articles on this subject.
/. which describes the RIAA's version of a Streaming-only service.
In fact, Microsoft - through implementation of HailStorm - is looking to find more virtual realestate to sell off or rent out, since windows desktops have physical dimensions. The solution here will partially be implemented with OfficeXP and will be firther implemented with WindowsXP. By moving services off the desktop and onto servers, microsoft is then only limited by the size of the enviromentally controlled warehouses they use for their server farms.
Back to the main issue of media formats for a moment: I wouldn't be suprised to see a move by Microsoft to implement 'streaming only' restrictions into media recordings. This idea has been played with by several companies and recording industry organizations including the RIAA. This is discussed in a vary good posting on
I agree that this move by microsoft is yet another anti-competitive behavior, but I have ceased being suprised by Lord Bill's moves, a long time ago
--CTH
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I'm surprised nobody else really commented on this. Read that line again in the article. Microsoft wanted AOL to sign a "Mutual Legal Release" which basically said they wouldn't take legal action against each other for the term of the contract.
Would YOU sign an agreement like that with Micrsoft?