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RealNetworks Sues Microsoft Over Antitrust Issues
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?"
Real has a case there, because Microsoft is using the same tried-and-true approach that made IE what it is today. And the fact that they make it almost impossible to remove WMP in XP will make the case that much more believable.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
Maybe, but the situations are different. Real Media is still very much alive, while Netscape was pretty much dead in the Windows world when the anti-trust lawsuit finally was decided.
Dear Real:
We still remember when you were selling our personal data. So even if we could get your player preinstalled in our computers, it would be the first to be removed.
Your player is complete bloatware with one of the most misleading installs ever. thanks for the headache you rat bastards.
Netscape had the perfect case against Microsoft: "we'll cut off their air supply." What came of that? MS was found guilty, but the govt. decided not to do anything about it. How do you go up against that?
This is like a steel cage match between bin Laden and Hitler. Who the hell do I root for?
Is there a scenario where both can lose?
Here's to hoping that the courthouse explodes.
Tal
"Study your math, kids. Key to the universe." -The Archangel Gabriel
Seems to me the DOJ is doing one lame ass job in enforcing antitrust laws.
Ask yourself, how FAIR can competition be when one application gets deep penetration into the consumer market while others are locked out on purpose?
eTrade SUCKS
On the one hand, microsoft using it's monopoly is a bad thing.
On the other hand, the sooner real networks dies and takes their horrible, ad-driven software with them, the better.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
If Real didn't make their player so goddamn intrusive when it comes to computer use, I'd be happy to support them on this. I cannot stand the fact that whenever I launch the RealOne player, it puts its advertisement programme into the background, and I have to kill it and remove it out of the registry to from stop it from starting up whenever I login.
Microsoft is in the wrong in this situation, but Real is worse by selling personal information, having a player that eats more than its fair share of needed memory, and including what may be spyware with its software. If this were Apple and Quicktime, I'd be more willing to go and support them on this.
must i be stuck choosing between the lesser-of-two-evils again?
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
I don't know but given the speed of our court system, Microsoft's vast resources and the inventible appeals, I'd say we'll find out in about 5 - 7 years.
One could argue that Microsoft uses their monopoly position to strongly urge the OEMs not to include Real software. This would certainly be a violation of the settlement. It seems that Microsoft is still pulling the strings when OEMs need to decide what software to include with their computers. That's not a good thing.
I dunno, I think that the real reason Real Player died out is more or less due to a lower quality program. True, Microsoft's bundling may have caused Real Player usage to decline prematurely, but it was inevitable that it would die out sooner or later.
Mind your own business. Never in my life I've seen a piece of software as intrusive, spyware and ad-ridden and poorly written as Real Player. Face it, fellas, even if you force Microsoft to bundle RealPlayer with Windows it isn't gonna fly. First thing the customers will do is they will turn this piece of crap off, because it will try feed insane amounts of ads to them and pop up the god damn notification thingy to remind you that even though it's not doing anything useful at the time it's still taking up 10M of RAM and some processor resources while also trying to upsell you on the crap you could care less about.
Good god, I don't want them to win. I'd hate to have to remove this shit from my newly purchased PC.
But maybe Microsoft could be made to licence the Real codecs as part of an antitrust settlement instead of having the full blown RealPlayer installed ... i personally don't like RealPlayer itself but the RealAudio codec would come in handy for those sites that insist on only supporting real.
-= Technomancer =-
How are Real's formats any more proprietary than Microsoft's?
RealPlayer still competes with Windows Media Player over common formats like MPEG and MP3.
>>It no longer has spyware. Real Networks has stated that a number of times. However there seems to be a pattern of people using packet sniffers and discovering that RealPlayer sends out machine specific identifiers and urls to Real's network. To which Real replies "opps, guess we missed that one"
This lawsuit is crap. This is not like the browser wars where microsoft took on netscape and used it's power to crush them. Real player is just some bad proprietary format that people don't like. The audio was bad and the video was horrible. They never took off because no one distributed their formats because of choice. And I remember on old windows versions how microsoft included real player, but then since no one wants it anymore, no one cares that it's gone.
I'd like to see where they could come up with "billions of dollars of damages" on a free player. What, they were going to rake in billions from their expensive encoders and streaming software? Real's out because of divx, mpeg, and quicktime, not microsoft.
And how many times have people here gone through the task of removing the real player? I think of it as the original spyware, tough to kill. You couldn't pay me to put it on my computer.
How is this insightful? What exactly does the nature of Real media have to do with Microsoft's strong-arm tactics to exclude competing players using leverage of WinOS?
I dislike Real Player for many reasons, but the open/closed nature of their media has absolutely nothing to do with how it's distributed.
Judge: Members of the jury, do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty? ... [buffering]
Jury: Your honour, we find the defendant
Nothing is so smiple that it can't be screwed up.
You know a program REALLY sucks when...
TO: Real Networks
SUBJECT: Fuck You All
I am holding myself back in the most intense way at the moment.
I don't care if this is the wrong address to send this to. Your website is a labyrinth of misdirection in which finding the simple thing you want is nigh-impossible. This, after about 20 clicks, was the first email address I came to. If you, as the person receiving this letter, have a shred of humanity left, you will submit this to the proper people. And now, on to my letter.
Where do you people get off?
My task: download Realplayer in order to view some streaming content. A simple project, one would say. Well, first you have to wade through the aforementioned sea of misdirection, all of it aimed at extracting your visa number to buy the completely useless realplayer plus. I realize you people need to make some money, but save it for the server business - it's bad enough that back in the day, you were inferior to several other streaming technologies, but somehow, like scum in water, you rose to the top. Leave the users who are stuck with your products out of your sick little power games.
All I want is Realplayer Basic, to play realmedia, and ONLY realmedia. I am not interested in realjukebox, realdownloadagent, or realbuttplug. I specified this when I was installing it. I also am not interested in having your inferior product play my mp3s, or any format other than your own. This was also specified when I installed. How difficult a concept is this? Anyone can grasp it. And I won't even get into the god-knows-how-many useless "subscribe to our spam service!" checkboxes I have to uncheck, including five which are HIDDEN AT THE BOTTOM OF A STACK OF UNCHECKED ONES. With each click, the bile rises higher in my throat. If I knew a satanist, I would have him summon demons to terrorize your offices.
So then, I go to launch an mp3 out of Agent, and not only does your software launch even though I SPECIFICALLY TOLD IT NOT TO DO THAT, but it's not even Realplayer - it's Realjukebox which I also SPECIFICALLY TOLD IT NOT TO INSTALL.
And here's the real point: if you're going to go ahead and do a fascist coup of my system's preferences and resources (getting your filthy little icons out of my system tray gets more difficult with each new version), why bother pretending that you are giving me a choice? Just go ahead and take it, save me the trouble of unchecking all those boxes and saying No 20 times. Just go ahead, play your little game, and let me get on with removing your annoying system resource wastes from my pristine desktop.
In closing, I would just like to say that I view your company as the most evil force operating on the internet today, and while I would end this with "may God have mercy on your souls" for anyone else (including Bill Gates), for you, I only pray that the people behind your software's design are raped by syphilitic camels at some point.
Burn in hell.
I always save my last mod point to mod up a good troll. You people are too serious.
This is like a steel cage match between bin Laden and Hitler. Who the hell do I root for?
Y'know, I just pondered this for a moment, and find it somewhat odd...
Years ago, back in the prime of the dialup days, we just couldn't hate any company more than AOL. Anything involving them might as well have had leprosy, as far as geeks felt.
And yet now, with this tossup (WMP vs RealOne), I just realized that I currently use both a browser (Mozilla) and a media player (WinAmp) heavily funded by AOL.
Strange, how times can change. And yet, if you asked me my general opinion of AOL, I'd still say they suck - But I suppose I have to thank them for sponsoring two pretty nice programs.
Scary thought - Perhaps some day, we'll have to thank (gasp!) Microsoft for creating something nice for us? Eeeek. Time to go hide under the bed for a while.
One can only hope that this is a long, expensive legal battle that weakens both parties.
Real, at least for their server software is (or was...) almost entirely a Linux shop. Real helped Linux make inroads into the server market at a LOT of companies. I'm still under NDA so I'm only mentioning two of the ones I could find press releases for quickly, but this includes companies with great big satelite networks (PanAmSat for one), a couple of great big phone companies (like Deutshce Telecom)...
Real also helped a lot in the fight to get Linux drivers for a whole bunch of video capture cards...
...doesn't excuse the shit they pulled, but...
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
I don't think even the most anti-MS zealot could make that claim with a straight face.
Real player sure works a lot better on my computer than Windows Media Player. In fact, it works an infinite percent better becuase WMP won't run at all.
Of course, I'm not using Windows.
Granted, that might look like zealotry, but that just shows ignorance to call it that. The fact of the matter is that one works (although, yes, it really is bad) and the other fails to do anything at all.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
I disagree...
Have any of you used RealPlayer lately? While WMP 9 has been getting more and more functional in terms of quality and features (surround-sound media formats, HD-quality video, built-in ripping and encoding, a usable Media Library), RealPlayer has become progressively bloated, ad-ridden, and full of spy-ware. The fact that I have to search through the registry to disable the stupid "Real Message Center" background app is infuriating to me, and is the major reason why I avoid it and tell others to do the same.
First of all, why must the two be mutually exclusive? I have both of them installed on my PC quite happily. When I double-click on a RealMedia file, the Windows Shell launches RealPlayer. When I double-click on a WindowsMedia file, the shell launches WMP 9. How is this "lock-out"?
Second of all, how can there really be "lock-out" when there is so much competition in the Media Player market? Aside from iTunes for Windows, there is also Winamp 2/3/5, QuickTime, Sonique, Media Player Classic, and several other lesser-known ones. They all work great on Windows, and co-exist just fine with Media Player.
The only argument I see here is Real whining that Microsoft should have to distribute RealPlayer for them. In other words, Media Player has an unfair advantage because it ships with Windows. Well, duh. But now the government should protect RealPlayer because it is not installed with Windows?
Here's a suggestion for Real: Make a better player, and you'll gain market share the old-fashioned way. Through customers who WANT to use your software, not just because it's there.
Why does real suck? ... I can turn off most of the spy features.
Case in point.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
The complaint isn't that MS won't package RealCrap on their install disc. The complaint is that supposedly MS is, by predatory and restrictive licencing, essentially forbidding manufacturers from packaging competitors' media players.
Otherwise, you're right, this would be absurd. If the actual accusation were in fact the case, this would be essentially a smaller "browser war," but it clearly is not, as many Dell customers on Slashdot have attested.
To reign is to serve.
Strange, how times can change. And yet, if you asked me my general opinion of AOL, I'd still say they suck - But I suppose I have to thank them for sponsoring two pretty nice programs.
I was working for a small fragment of Turner Broadcasting (owned by Time Warner) when the AOLTW merger happened. And I have to say from that experience, and from what else I've seen of AOL, they're not really evil. Chaotic Neutral, maybe.
Here's the thing... their main product sucks. It's dumped tons of people onto the internet that maybe we'd rather not have there. They've done their best to be the biggest, but mostly by littering our mailboxes, magazines, point-of-purchase displays, and what-have-you with coasters-I-mean-CDs.... which costs them money as much as it's a hassle for us.
They treat their employees fairly well, and have a basically honest and moral business philosophy. Their dealings with Time Warner, which were overly optimistic and misguided on both sides, were still up-front and didn't give me any ooky feeling. When we were directed to install AOL on every single computer in our office (bad, bad idea, and one they finally gave up on), their techs commiserated with ours over the difficulties of installing AOL in a network environment (the 6.0 install would hang if there was a network card installed. Always. Unless you installed 5.0 first.)
They're sort of like Electronic Arts... nice company to work for (in some ways), but I wouldn't want to do business with them. Though with AOL it seems to be general ineptitude balanced by blind luck, rather than anything malicious.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
[mods shouldn't mod your stupid sig up along with you insightful comment.]
These days, now that we've learned that the gee wiz of having something to do with computers isn't enough to spell success, there are a few very simple rules for doing business that I wish companies would learn.
1. Don't piss off your customers
2. Your product, perceived or otherwise, has to be better then your competitors.
Real follows neither of these rules, and this lawsuit appears to be nothing more then a last ditch effort to gain capital. It is a reality that if a company has no other business model then to offer an inferior product and expect customers to either pay for it or suffer egregious violations of their privacy, when they are a few mouse clicks away from something better that is free, that company will fail. It's just common sense.
Normally a company run with such a bad business model would die away without notice, but Real has entrenched itself on the server end with its proprietary format. They have this because they were one of the first (if not the first) to show up with streaming audio back in the day.
I can remember responding with amazement the first time I got streaming real audio. They were the first through the door and got the brand reconciliation, bringing organizations like NPR with them with this new technology. And they squandered it away. It's sad, but it's the real world (excuse the pun).
Unless Real can come up with a technology that bests the free alternatives in quality and does so without being intrusive to the users privacy or computer system, they will die, lawsuit or otherwise.
The Internet is generally stupid
That's why they're working on this:
https://www.helixcommunity.org/
Does it really seem realistic to expect Microsoft to not include a media player with Windows? Mac OS has come with Quicktime forever, and now includes iTunes. All of the Linux distros have come with a suite of multimedia applications for years. If anything, Windows Media Player shows that there IS competition out there, and that Microsoft is having to add new features to keep up. Tough shit for Real if that means having another competitor to help choke those last few death rattles out of Real's crap products.
Further, Windows Media Player is just an evolution and consolidation of the various CD/Wav/Video playing tools MS has been adding in including since the Windows 3.1 days, updated with newer codecs and a better UI. Windows is not cheap, and adding newer, better features is necessary for Microsoft to continue adding customers. Real never bitched back when the Windows multimedia stuff was a few different programs under "entertainment," and for them to say that Microsoft is violating antitrust laws now for providing something that consumers got used to a long time ago is just a load of crap.
Of course, I guess when you're running a company that's trying to make money selling that shitty RealOne player, you'll do anything to get the stock price up.
EULAs; Contracts; Restrictions; DMCA; DRM; Spyware
Sneaky WMP agreements; unfixed IE insecurities; Outlook worms; No December Patches
IE Antitrust; European Commission; SCO; Now this.
All of the above have been helped along by the idea of proprietary software. Ever since I came home for Christmas to a house full of Windows machines, I have been inundated with examples of how cumbersome, expensive, restrictive, frustrating and downright ANNOYING proprietary software can be. Why do people put up with this?!
Real's suit against Microsoft is among these examples. MS wants a closed, system where All The World is a Windows PC, and RealNetworks needs to make money with its proprietary media player. And because megacorporations are often without conscience, Real has no recourse but to sue these monopolists!
The longer I watch the Industry, the more proprietary software strikes me as the runaway train fueled by the residual billionaires of IT's infancy. The computer industry has been riddled all its life with IP infringement lawsuits. Open-Source can serve as the step to maturity that gets us out of that ludicrous, litigous business model.