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RealNetworks Sues Microsoft Over Antitrust Issues

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the not-gonna-take-it-anymore dept.

jamacdon writes "Yahoo! has an article about RealNetworks Inc. filing an antitrust suit against Microsoft, claiming that MS has violated antitrust laws. This claim appears to revolve around how PC makers are restricted from including competing media players. Very similiar to the Internet Explorer issue, but different content. Will the results be the same?"

4 of 491 comments (clear)

  1. Dumb questions get dumb answers by Alex+Reynolds · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Who gave and who will give yet more money to the Bush election campaigns? There's your answer.

    -Alex

  2. Re:frivolous lawsuit by The+Bungi · · Score: 0, Flamebait
    They should not have the power to dictate what is done with that afterwards [...] Including another Media player is not illegal, it doesn't damage Microsoft in any way. Ergo, Microsoft, once again, are abusing their monopoly by using strong arm tactics to "keep OEM's in line".

    I'd like you to provide some proof that Microsoft currently forces OEMs to include WMP and omit any other music players in their systems. Your post is a bit confusing to me because every single Dell box nowadays ships with WMP and Real. Dell is pretty much the biggest OEM of them all. And believe me, I just bought two Dell laptops and the first thing I did was to kill the AOL and Real crap.

    So, again, please provide some backing proof of your claims. A link or something. It seems to me that if you're going to mouth off like this you should have some solid evidence to back what you're saying.

    Thanks!

  3. Re:Will the result be the same? by rossz · · Score: 0, Flamebait
    It's an app that is part of the OS's suite of standard Apps you can't entirely do without. It's not free - it's just that the cost is carried inside another product.
    And that's because Microsoft made damn sure you couldn't run Windows without IE. Tying IE into the OS was simply a way for them to gain an illegal monopoply. It also had the distinction of being the cause of most of the security vulnerabilities that are so common on the various windows platforms.
    --
    -- Will program for bandwidth
  4. Re:The winner will be... Apple Quicktime. by mabu · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Quicktime is as much a virus as the Real Player.

    Winamp is the superior alternative to all the crap companies who insist on harassing their users every time they play a video clip and making it incredibly difficult to remove the secret hooks and nagware they install. Quicktime is even worse than Real IMO.