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RealNetworks Sues Dutch Webmaster Over Hyperlink To Freeware

Posted by timothy on from the verhuur-zoekend-gedrag dept.

An anonymous reader writes "In the ever lasting contest for the most idiotic lawsuit, RealNetworks has sued a Dutch man for posting a link to a competing freeware program that allegedly infringes on RealNetworks' intellectual property. The company also secretly obtained a court order that resulted in confiscation of all computers belonging to the man and his family. The 26-year-old has already incurred over €66,000 in legal fees and if he loses the case, he's facing €210,000 in fines. Where are the Anonymous when you need them?"

3 of 297 comments (clear)

  1. Streisand effect? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Real Alternative.

  2. Re:"competing freeware program" by Dahamma · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yeah, except the Real Alternative package is NOT actually freeware, but basically distributes the *actual* Real Player DLLs that it uses to decode with a wrapper. That's pretty clearly a copyright infringement (criminal one in fact, as it was willful and widely distributed, which generally counts as "commercial").

    Real Networks IMO is a total bottom feeder company and I'd personally never install their software, but one thing I hate more than d-bag companies like Real is blatant misinformation, and this article is full of it...

  3. Even their paying customers get bloat! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Now, this dates back /years/ ago but at some point I was really happy with the RealPlayer that I decided to license it. It was simply awesome; I started it up and could view just about anything. From US news broadcasts to Japanese TV series right down to stuff from India and Germany. (this was "pre-Youtube" time so to speak).

    Then other solutions emerged (and my interest slowly waned) but guess what? Next time I started the app. (a few years later) I was greeted with "you should upgrade!", which I didn't do. Why? I was happy with the way it was.

    Add another few months and this time I wasn't able to run the program anymore period. "You need to upgrade" was all which was said, of course without any options for a real upgrade. I could pick another "free" player and that was basically it. My paid for enhancements were gone. Heck; my whole player was gone.

    DON'T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT... Just set your disdain aside for a moment and look at the realplayer product page. Question: do you see anything there which hints at upgrade options for existing users ? Well, there aren't any.

    Realplayer was the best learning experience for me (and all in all not /that/ expensive fortunately) to never buy anything from Real networks again.