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Real Feels iTunes Backlash
BunkAsInBed writes "CNET reports RealNetwork's recent campaign against the iTunes music network that involved tactics like slashing the costs of their downloads in half, reverse engineering Apple's FairPlay format (Harmony), and recently an online petition and bulliten board have received the opposite reponse that was anticpated."
How about the fact that Real's music store isn't Mac compatible? Is that enough reason to dislike Real in this situation?
GPL Deconstructed
Why do you assume that they are only targeting the Mac version? Last I checked, there were versions of both the iPod and the iTunes for Windows. Sure we (users of Apple's Windows products) are not the one's that Apple really cares about, but we do still exsist.
Slashdot...it's like Fox news, but without the biased sl...or maybe not.
I could see your point if they were stripping out DRM to create a DRM-less product. However, all they're doing is converting their DRM to Apple's DRM. This has nothing to do with arguments over DRM and its validity, and everything to do with whether or not Apple can control who can license its DRM technology.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
The full quote is "Competition' doesn't give you any right to reverse-engineer when you feel like it, but come down on those that hack into your IP rights."
The quoter claimed Real had no right to reverse engineer when the company itself will not allow others to reverse engineer. It's not about law, in the quote, but about reciprocity. If they think it's okay for Real Co to RE the iPod and iTunesMS, then it should be okay for others to reverse RA stuff as well, which you didn't pick up.
GPL Deconstructed
Now while I understand the zealotry and the hatred for someone daring to stomp on Apple's parade I can't understand the "break my iPod" bit. If anything they have "fixed" the fucking iPod allowing it to play even more formats.
.rm format play on the iPod.
Ummm.... I'm impressed that you read the article but, you misunderstood:
Real named the board "Hey Apple! Don't break my iPod."
Real IS implying that they've fixed the iPod, and they don't want Apple to "break it" by suing them and not letting the
This would be the same Real which forbids any reverse engineering of RealVideo, or use of their libraries to achieve decoding outside their own player? (Check that EULA) And in wishing to "extend choice", ensures their own music store is only Windows/IE compatible? This is the set of moves one pundit called "shaking up the music industry"?
This commentary on the affair puts it into as sensible a perspective as it demands.
>Apple's codec sucks compared to even MP3
What was the format of those tracks? What bitrate? What makes you think Real is using their own codec for the iPod (It isn't, the iPod can't play RealAudio) What music store sells MP3's? (OK I know of ONE, but I doubt anyone has heard of any of it's bands) AAC compressed music actually sounds pretty good at comparable bitrates to MP3.
>I'll continue to stick to SHN/FLAC
Then your portable music player must have FLAC/SHN support and a gargantuan hard drive for the terrible 2:1 compression ratios you get. MP3/AAC usually gets about 10:1.
>Perhaps these Apple lovers have become so accustomed to vendor lock-in
You mean the way the Realaudio music store ONLY WORKS ON WINDOWS?
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
And iPods play MP3 files just fine. Real is trying to stick you with their proprietary format. Apple does have their (essentially) proprietary* format, but they'll let you use the standard as well. This is why Real is just wrong on this one.
* AAC isn't proprietary, but FairPlay basically is
But you'll note that they've closed down the forums, and if you go to the petition site, you can't view any of the comments or the names, only the signature count, even though most of the "signatures" are against the petition.
What? They were perfectly up front about this! They said that they were forced to take down the comments and names because Apple zealots were posting trash, porn, and obscenities.
"Astroturfing" is fake grassroots support, masquerading as a spontaneous outpouring of consumer devotion. When a company openly sponsors a petition, there's no pretense there. If this petition appeared on some blog somewhere, still quietly sponsored by Real but purporting NOT to be sponsored by Real, that'd be astroturfing. If Real spent money to create the illusion that customers love them enough to organize a petition on their own initiative, that would be astroturfing. That would be unethical, but they aren't doing that here. They're not lying: They say this is a Real-sponsored petition on Real's web site, and that's what it is.
If the anti-Real posters are in fact in being put up to it by Apple, yeah, that'd be astroturfing -- the point is that they have the APPEARANCE of being a spontaneous, "grass-roots" response to something. IF the appearance is false, then it's unethical.
Personally, I think Apple fans really do love the company enough to do that stuff on their own hook. I doubt that Apple would bother "astroturfing"; they really *do* have fanatical grass-roots support, at least in their own microscopic market niche.
I wash windows on that street - there is no such billboard :P
So I thought, ok, I am an apple user, I have an ipod, there is a valid point about companies opening up their platforms. So I thought, let's try to buy a 50 cents song on the real site. "Mac not supported". Wankers.
If you noticed on the real site mentioned in the article, the petition doesn't let you view the signatures. Yet there is another one that does let you view the signatures. Both petitions have different numbers of signatures, and both list on the bottom page that they were created by different admins of freedomofmusicchoice.org. It seems like they didn't like making the bad comments public so they created another petition and aren't letting comments be listed. Seems funny the lengths Real will go to.
JasonBlogs
You are confusing ACC and Fairplay. ACC is a compression format and is open and available for anyone to use. Fairplay is Apple's DRM and is basically proprietary, just like the grandparent poster stated.
Anyone can put make an ACC file and have it play on the iPod. What anyone cannot do is develop or sell a DRM format other than Fairplay and have the iPod understand and play it.
Apple has no control over ACC or who uses it.
The improvements you claim of is "nominal", give the credit where it's due and the evolution or improvement on KHTML for almost everything lies flatly on the KDE group.
Activists United
A new petition was started to counter Real's stupid publicity stunt, so everyone please feel free to sign up: http://www.petitiononline.com/notreal/petition.htm l
Free. AAC is not free.
I don't know what you consider to be "proprietary" but you need to be careful what misinformation you spread. Look up AAC and "proprietary" before you make that same comment ever again.
The AAC that we're talking about is MPEG-4 AAC. Reality is amusingly defiant of your assertion: Dolby has an entire independently operated subsidiary that handles licensing of several technologies, including AAC.
http://www.vialicensing.com/
products/mpeg4aac/standard.html
Go buy yourself a copy of the AAC standard at the ISO Online Store, or go get your FLAC or Ogg Vorbis specs for free from their sites.
Then build your device/software to use AAC *after* you secure licensing and arrange to pay royalties, or build your device/software to use FLAC or Ogg Vorbis and then just sell/distribute it.
"Digital Restrictions Management"
Get it right.
funny munging
Apple did make a small profit on iTunes. They just didn't expect they would. Steve Jobs disclosed during the iTunes One Year Anniversary conference call. Any profits they do make off iTunes should be listed in their quarterly SEC filings.
Source: http://www.macminute.com/2004/04/28/itunescall
From the story:
"The deluge of anti-RealNetworks sentiment prompted the company to take down the original petition and replace it with one without a comment section, but where the names of those who signed up were visible. Most signed up as 'Real sucks' or something similar. The ability to see names was then removed."
Does this sound like the actions of a company you want to trust?
A dream is good. A plan is better.
You are confusing ACC and Fairplay.
;-)
/.. Someone mod the parent up, please.
And you're confusing Advanced Audio Codec and ACC.
Anyone can put make an ACC file and have it play on the iPod. What anyone cannot do is develop or sell a DRM format other than Fairplay and have the iPod understand and play it.
Although beyond spelling your information is very insightful for all those "never-checked-any-facts" zealots on
The real reason Real had to hack Fairplay instead of going with plain AAC is thus actually pretty ironic: The labels would never let them put the music to any portable players without any DRM, so Real was forced to hack Apple's DRM to be able to keep their own music files DRMed... (On iPods, that is.)
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus
The BBC made a deal with Real to dejunk their player or else the BEEB would ditch Real.
l
The dejunked player is at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/audiohelp_install.shtm
So, if you must use Real, use this one and thank the BBC.
My father is a blogger.
Something can be both trademarked and patented. The patent describes how it works, and the trademark protects the name. :-)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
AAC is the property of the MPEG group, and if you check their website, the only people who need to license and pay royalties arre people who make and distribute the *hardware* to create AACs. *Anyone* can distribute or stream AAC files without paying royalties. The issue is FairPlay, and Real's need to DRM it's files, *not* any difficulty or licensing issues related to AAC.
Not trying to be negative, but is the base system & kernel open sourced from Apple or didn't Apple take somebody else's work and lock it down? In other words I have the understanding that Apple took FreeBSD which is somebodyelses hard work and added their own stuff on top without releasing the stuff on top or how it interacts with the stuff provided by FreeBSD, or any changes they might have made to FreeBSD to make it better.
Apple bought a company called NeXT that had a proprietary BSD386 based OS running on the Mach Micro-Kernal. In the company was an employee who had done a large amount of the original work creating the Mach Micro-kernal. Apple took the NeXTStep / OpenStep operating system as the basis for its Mac OS X operating system. Apple ported it to the PowerPC Chip sets, fused it with knowledge gained from Apple's earlier Unix OSes A/UX and MkLinux and then re-synced the userland with FreeBSD 4.x (now they sync the userland to FreeBSD 5.x).
This might need more explaining. Unlike Linux where all each distribution has the same Linix kernal (sometimes compiled in different ways, but still the same kernal code), BSD branches do NOT have the same kernal. NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, DragonflyBSD and Darwin(Mac OS X) are each different kernal code bases. Sometimes they share components / code, but mostly they do not. The different branches are designed to provide the same working userland to users and applications. By "re-synced the userland to FreeBSD" Apple did little more then confirm their OS is compatible with FreeBSD and either updated their own /bin and/usr/bin applications to feature / function compatibility with FreeBSD or ported the FreeBSD apps over, whichever made the most sense. Again all work was done by Apple Engineers.
So what Apple did was not "take somebody else's work and lock it down" but rather take the work Apple Engineers and the Engineers of a second company Apple bought (and retained the employees of) and release the code for no cost onto the internet.
OpenDarwin.org
While this is certainly valid given the license of FreeBSD, strictly speaking that's just being a thief as far as I'm concerned.(Yes I know MS has done this too with it's Unix Services layer).
If someone gives something to you for free, it is not stealing. The only people who are allowed a moral objection to how you use the freely given object are the ones who gave it to you. Far from being upset at it, BSD users "shouted for joy" that Apple choose to base their new OS on BSD. Daemon News: Apple -- What's in it for BSD?
I also understand however, that Apple has given some changes back to the KDE community for the web browser, locking up other changes however behind a proprietary license. In other words it looks to me like Apple is trying to garner some favor while stealing the "open source" community blind.
Every single piece of OpenSource software Apple has used (irrespective of the license it was released under and the requirement, or NOT, to release the code) they have release the code to. The code is available either through the Darwin OS , one of the other Apple Open Source Projects, or by giving the code back to the original developers. In addition to that Apple has also released code that was never before opensource, with projects such as OpenPlay , Darwin Streaming Server and
...under Windows you can install RealAlternative -- which is the latest versions (I believe?) of the Real codecs, and a copy of Media Player Classic (which can be found on Sourceforge).
MPC looks and works like Microsoft's Media Player 6, only it's polished up loads. Tells you about codecs it has a problem with, tells you where to get them if you've not got them. "Does what it says on the tin" -- and does it well... mmmm... open source goodness.
As a companion to the RealAlternative pack, there's a QuickTimeAlternative pack, which -- you guessed it -- is a just-as-legal but fully-working package of the Quicktime codecs and MPC.
Now you can watch both QT and Real stuff without even installing their players!
Oh.. the QT and Real Alternative packages both also have working Mozilla plugins too.
Physical drive size has nothing to do with it, you can run third party firmware on the iPod too.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Try setting your clock to some time 20 years from now or however much you want, run the program, click "Later" and then set the clock back to normal. That used to work anyway...
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
Anyone want to express how much Real's new ploy sucks should head over to http://www.petitiononline.com/notreal/ and sign the petition.
It's already gained more signitures, but a good slashdotting should sort things out.
These categories can be added to your iTunes playlists. Right-click the category / header (or empty space to the right of said categories / headers) to change or add subjects. 100% customizable. If anything, one could say that iTunes is the more flexible of the two.
Standing on the shoulders of giants.
He's talking about the browse boxes that show up when you press the browse button in the upper right or if you hit CTRL-B. He's right...it's only limited to genre, artist, album. It wouldn't be a bad idea to have boxes available for any field, although I tend to just use the search box exclusively.
I have never been more enraged at a computer in my life.
Just as some background I am your target customer. I own an iPod and have purchased multiple CD's online from both the Apple iTunes Music Store and buymusic.com. I am the person you want out there yelling from the rooftops how great your product is. You're going to hear quite the opposite.
I bought into the hype from various press outlets about Real offering $.49 track downloads and $4.99 CD's. I visited your site and searched your media catalog without downloading your software. I was very impressed by the quantity of artists in your catalog. It seemed too good to be true. Mom told me what to expect when I had that feeling, but, like an idiot, I ignored mom yet again.
First, I downloaded your software. The installation can, at best, be considered painful. Two reboots! C'mon! I am doing this at work! I am supposed to put all my important projects on hold while I reboot twice just so I can start my computer again to give you money. Ridiculous. The worst part is I knew Real was likely sinking their greedy hooks deep into my system with evil DRM type underpinnings. But, once again, I ignored mom's advice to stop before I was "too deep" and continued down the path of Real evil.
So I decided to purchase a Godsmack album. $4.99. I created my Music Store account and paid for my purchase. I was pretty excited as I saw the file sizes were relatively large (as opposed to buymusic.com which obviously have fairly low bitrates). The files came down quickly from your servers.
I excitedly went to burn my CD to a CD-R. Bzzzz! No rights! No freaking rights! Yes, I am sure that is buried deep within some subclause of some clause of some crappy contract I "OK" clicked my way through, but holy cow. I cannot wait to tell the world that today, in 2004, you actually pay Real.com honest money to honestly purchase a music track and support an artist and you are rewarded with idiotic DRM that doesn't allow you to burn the tracks to a real CD. That's funny, I thought I bought a CD! Wrong!
This seriously chapped my behind and I heard my mother laughing in the back of my head. She knew how this was going to turn out, and my mother can't even turn on a computer. But she has more common sense than me and she would have steered far clear of your unReal offering.
So, continuing on, I was mightily frosted and began investigating ways to rip the tracks even with your DRM hooks clawed maniacally into my machine. (Hey, let's be realists, people are going to get the music onto CD whether you like it or not, if they are motivated. And since I was at work I figured I was doing it for the sake of science and whatnot.) I set out to play the tracks to listen to the quality, figuring I would work out a way to capture the audio stream to a WAV file and compressing it into an MP3 later. With just the Real Player running on my computer, I started playing Track #1.
My computer instantaneously shut down.
My mom is having hysterical fits of laughter at my expense by this point. Reminder to self: send mom flowers for all her great advice. She was so right.
So, there goes a few hours of work that I didn't save. Silly me I thought I was just playing a music track. I didn't realize I was connecting to the WHOPR and trying to play Global Thermonuclear War.
So I had enough hate boiled up inside of me to last the rest of the day and didn't attempt to use your crappy player again.
So, I arrive again this morn and figured I would take on "the challenge". I loaded the fugly Real Player and clicked on "Purchased Music". I selected all 11 tracks from the Godsmack album and clicked "Play Selections". I held my breath and closed my eyes and imagined a whole group of mothers laughing at me all chanting: "What do you think you are doing! You know it isn't going to work you fool!" What? It didn't crash! Yippie! Strike up the band. Oh wait... I have to login? What? What is this. Oh yes, I have to log in to your freakin site for permissio
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