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Real Sues Baseball Over Windows Media
westlake writes 'According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, RealNetworks has sued Major League Baseball over its use of Windows Media. The dispute began with MLB's decision to stream exhibition games in WMA format only, under its revised contract, Real claims all live MLB streams must include RealMedia as an option. The piece states: 'Windows Media Player controlled about 34 percent of the U.S. market, compared with nearly 19 percent for RealOne player and 10 percent for QuickTime player, according to January data from Nielsen/NetRatings.'"
before I die, I'd love to see a company actually try to innovate, instead of sueing.
a regular contract dispute to me. "Where's the beef?"
What?
I admit I haven't RTFA, but 34% (WMP) + 19% (Real) + 10% (QT) leaves 37% to add to 100. I'm assuming this is only streaming video, so what takes up that extra market share?
-Trillian
Real is just doing what other failing industries are doing. Biting the hand that feeds them. Real hasn't been losing money because of MLB didn't want to renew the contract as it was previously, it has been losing money because it sucks. Large groups of people (no matter how stupid) will eventually pick the better format. I am not saying that Windows Media is the better format, but when you only have two options, Real or Windows Media, you be the Judge.
-- johntracy.com, because everybody else is wrong.
The disagreement is about MLB not using real to broadcast the preseason games, which Real believes is part of their contract. This kind of debate is something jocks can provide us the most insight on, on whether preseason is real baseball or not, on a technical and a meaningful level (Does the preseason really matter of affect how the regular season will go?)
While I haven't read the contract, and am not a lawyer, based on the information in the article this is a stupid lawsuit by Real. They are alleging that the phrase "baseball season" in their contract with MLB includes the exhibition serieses and the World Series.
Every baseball fan knows the term "preseason" and "postseason". Apparently Real Networks does not, and thinks it's grounds for a lawsuit.
Anybody got deeper info?
They don't show you a copy of the contract but if it says Season and doesn't specifically say pre-season or spring training then Real has no case. The baseball "season" doesn't start until The Yankees play Tampa Bay in Tokyo on March 30th. I think even a 5 year old could tell you that.
I don't understand libertarians. All you guys complain about is how the judicial system interferes with capitalism blah blah blah, and that they should stay out of everything except contract enforcement. Real brings a breach of contract action and you STILL complain! This has nothing to do with the quality of Real's software (yes it sucks, and it always has), it has to do with a CONTRACT.
"westlake writes 'According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, RealNetworks has sued Major League Baseball over its use of Windows Media. "
Wrong. They're suing MLB for NOT using Real. This news would be mildly more interesting if MS told MLB not to use Real. But the article doesn't say that happened, so put your pitchfork down. I can't believe that's the headline over there.
Actually, Real's probably in the right over this assuming the contract is as clearly stated as it is mentioned in the article.
"Derp de derp."
They can if you sign a contract with them saying you will.
"will microsoft sue me for not using windows?"
Same thing, if you sign an actual contract with Microsoft, then you're bound by that contract. We're not even talking about an Eula here, we're talking about a real bona fide contract.
The whole thing is about marketing. If you have agreed to mention Blah Inc. during your press conference, but you failed to do so, you'll get sued. And it doesn't matter if you want to also mention Baa Inc., but you must mention Blah Inc.
MLB failed to give RealNetworks such marketing presence, thus gets sued.
As much as I dislike the Micrsoft monopoly (Microsopoly? Whatever...), I dislike everything Real-associated.
Besides the Spyware, besides having to go through heck to even find the free Realplayer on their site.... the galling part is anything you put into a Real format is stuck there. Just try and find some apps that convert their sound or video formats to some other format.... it's a challenge.
Pot... kettle... black!
How do you control a market? these are not commodities. A user can have all of these, or none, or any combination there of installed. Its not like an OS where the computer is running one OS at a time (side stepping the virutalizaton issue). So install base isnt a zero sum. Now you can distrubte the same content in multiple methods, so again this isnt zero sum. So HOW can you have a market share. Its not like the rating what people are watching as one tv can only be tuned to one thing at a given time (again side stepping PIP). Shouldnt it be the percentage of people that have the compatiable player installed. So for all internet connected client machines, X% have a compatiable WMA player, Y% have Real, and Z% have Quicktime. X, Y and Z have no corelation ( assuming players dont attack each other). So you cant 'control' the market but rather its a progess meter on how well you have been able to penetrate the market. It is completly possible for windows to have 100%, while Real has 100%, and Quicktime again has 100%, that would mean every client machine has all three players installed. If that is the case who has 'controled' the market?
Well some people like baseball more than they hate Real. Sue Us.
I can't bet anything to play unless go to my windows
computer, but I work on Linux and I like to listen to a ball game now and then.
I would not have paid $14 to MLB for a season pass to listen to the games if i knew I couldn't use my primary computer - linux.
Supposidly there are MS media player alternatives for linux buy so far nothing work for MLB streams.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Of course not. If you won't RTFA, RTFB (blurb).
This is probably no different from one providing binaries but not source for a GPL application. You agreed to provide a format in your contract, you either do so, or argue that the contract doesn't cover that instance. And if you're smart you do so even if it isn't explicitly in the contract, so there's no chance of a lawsuit and you look good in the other people's eyes.
Microsoft can sue you, and probably successfully, for not using Windows if Microsoft and you had contracted for you to sell dual-boot machines, and you start selling all-Linux machines.
Yep. It's an awesome customer retention policy too.
-- Patience is a virtue, but impatience is an art.
The thing I don't quite understand is if these stations are just streaming audio (and usually just stereo audio at lower than CD quality), why don't they just stream it as mp3 or whatever Shoutcast uses? It works great on every platform I've tried it on and doesn't need some proprietary spyware-bloated application to listen. They could still offer a 56kbps for modem users and a 128kbps stream for everyone else. With video it becomes more complicated of course, but with broadband you might as well just use DivX or even mpeg2 to stream your stuff instead of proprietary codecs again.
Coke doesn't have an exclusive contract that requires that Coke be served at restaurant X. It's as simple as that. I've seen a few other threads that went by your logic. The bottom line is that if the contract mentions the baseball "season" but not the "preseason," Real will lose.
And now, for a sig that's a complete copout.
Because in and of itself it's a neat factoid but irrelevant. Now if he's directly involved in decisions or hasn't declared to both boards that he's in conflict then it's more than a neat factoid.
I don't use RealPlayer at all. If for some reason a website offers only RealPlayer videos I just do without. not a big deal for me. much more annoying, as you say, to remove the tentacles of Real after you've installed their "free" player.
That's ironic, because that's what I do if something is WMA-only. And if I something's offered in both streams, I'll choose Real every time.
And if I want to uninstall RealPlayer, I'd just drag the app to the trash and empty it. It's gone. Wait, you can't do that on Windows???
The lawsuit should be ruled invalid. MLB bought a service. They don't have to use it if they don't want to. It's like If I don't play my old nintendo anymore even though it's there. They still have the option to use it if they want to though because they bought the option for the year.
Real needs to stop complaining and be happy they got the money they got.
Ps: Stop the lawsuits, we look like crap in other countries.
If you don't understand the psychology of city-sports loyalty than you really don't understand what it means to be a fan. I grew up in Chicago. I'm a Chicago Bears fan. Some of my fondest memories are watching Bears games with my Dad and brother. I live in Boston now. I love the Red Sox. I've invested a lot emotionally in supporting the team. It's not because I live here... I hate the Pats and they are Super Bowl Champs. People don't just root and support a team because they are homers. They support a team because of feeling and emotion. Players of a team embrace a city, people look for players who engage the fans. Take Curt Schilling, he very much has started to take a hold of Boston and he hasn't even pitched a game yet at Fenway. But, it's his personality.. he understand what fans want from players. Fans don't give a crap if a player is from the hometown, they just want repsonsive players to the fans. Loyalty is a feeling, it's something very unique. I guess as a Sox fan I can't explain exactly why I love the Sox.. but I do. The Sox make me feel good, I look forward to booing them, cheering them, second guessing them. But in the end, I support them because it makes me feel good... and that's being a fan. Sometimes you can't explain it. It's emotions and attitude.
Because it isn't even interesting as a footnote...
I'm sure you can think of plenty of employees (even higher-level managers) who've sued the company they work for. They aren't really suing themselves, they're just suing their bosses, really.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
"A Microsoft competitor does bad things, therefore Microsoft is not so bad as everyone thinks."
If the bad things the competitor does are significantly worse than MS's actions then yes, the logic holds true.
That is bull. When people encounter a site which says "ok, you need to install this plugin", most people tend to actually install it. They're in fact _too_ eager to install any plugin. That's how 90% of them get those dialers, spyware and God knows what else on their machines.
.avi codec, I'm not wasting my time downloading DivX."
You may also notice how there's no shortage of people downloading DivX. (Seein' as there's no shortage of ripped movies on P2P, for example.) Not many start saying "bah, my computer already came with Microsoft's
You may also notice that there's no shortage of people downloading the latest and greatest Macromedia Flash player. There are whole sites available _only_ in Flash, and a thriving Flash ads industry. Much as I'd like to see both of those die a painful death, they're not going to. Why? Because surprisingly enough people do download the plugin.
Now if they had to _buy_ a product to view those files, they might think twice. But installing RealOne? I don't think anyone will start crying over a 10 minute download. (And don't start telling me about the poor people of Elbonia with their 9600 Baud modems. Anyone on that slow a modem doesn't watch streaming video of baseball players _training_.)
Why would someone then refuse to use RealOne? Well, how about the fact that RealOne is a spammy annoying piece of crap? Or that for a long while you had to dig deep to find the camouflaged link to even be able to download the "free" (annoyware) player? Being directed to a plugin site, and every link seems to want money for it, I can see how that would make people think twice.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.