RealNetworks To Sell iPod-Compatible Songs

[jdhuskey]

Apple will still sell plenty of ipods because of style and because they are the market leader but a bit of competition will force them to be honest and keep prices fair.

Do you pay any attention at all? Apple has, since the beginning, maintained the very best and most consistent prices at iTMS. As for the iPod, you get what you pay for: Quality and Style. Just look at the other players - they are all crap. I'm sure they work fine, but they're ugly and not at all easy to use. The 4th generation iPods are super slick with the mini's click wheel. And did you just overlook the fact that Apple dropped the price of the iPods by $100 on the 4th generation players?

I agree with several other posters here: Real has always sucked. They don't give a rat's a** about consumer choice. Real is just struggling. They need to be able to sell something to make money and Apple is kicking their butt. The way I see it, this is already healthy competition. Real can't keep up. The strong survive and the weak go away. I might feel sorry for them if they'd ever had a good, strong product that I'd ever liked, but that's just not the case.

 

[Stewie]

So if I go to the store and see something I like but cannot have I should just steal it?

No, but you can go home and make your own that is a likeness of what you saw in the store.

 

[MikeTheC]

Funny how the only company with any integrity in this whole business is Apple. Regardless of what one thinks about their decision to (try to) keep iPod/iTunes a closed platform, they've at least been consistently up-front about why they want to do that: it moves the merchandise. <SNIP> Glaser's got the tail wagging the dog. And why aren't any of these people busy noticing that all this "consumer choice" is really just saying let's lock everyone into Microsoft's format? There's a world of downside to that outcome that Glaser and others just pretend doesn't exist.

Amen! Lay it on, brother...

 

[JediL1]

What about Microsoft?

If its this easy for Real to make their files playable on iPod, what will happen when Microsoft's Store comes with Harmony type technology (possibly licensed from Real).

What about when the portable music player market becomes so commoditized that there isn't much profit in selling players? Where will Apple's Music-Based profit engine come from?

Not bashing Real or Apple, just curious if anyone has some good answers.

 

[lssmit02]

DMCA does permit reverse engineering

Just a small point, but if (and that's a big if) Real did reverse engineer FairPlay, there is a possibility that it is permitted under the DMCA. Sec. 1201(f) allows you to reverse engineer an encryption system for the purposes of allowing interoperability. I'm not an expert on exactly how this provision is intended to work, but it may be the legal loophole used by Real to get around Apple's DRM encryption system.

If you're interested, the link to the DMCA is here.

 

[Adurbe]

Give RealPlayer a try

A lot of people seem to be bashing real's software, which in the past i grant you has been shoddy to say the least... but i must admit the new version is very nice indeed, its stable and plays rather well. Give the new version a try

On the DRM note if Apple licence it it will almost certainly become the standard, standards = profits, if they wait too long it wont only be real competing, imagine if ms make one too (i mean one that works with iPods)

 

[padrino121]

Why do they need to circumvent FairPlay to do this.

so... apple doesn't know yet?
it will play on the iPod because its an illegal copy of FairPlay?

heh... wonder what they had to do...


edit: whoa whoaa!!! they're going to license it, too?!

The iPod can play non DRMed files on it. I imagine they just enforce the DRM themselves on it without having anything to do with the AAC FairPlay DRM. That is completely legal and not much different in concept then running other software on your iPod, this one happens to allow Real's songs to play.

 

[TWinbrook46636]

No, but you can go home and make your own that is a likeness of what you saw in the store.

No, in the context of this thread:

Buy it. Take it apart. Copy the design. Return it. Then market the stolen design as my own.

If this is just Real coming up with their own DRM that is compatible with the iPod then fine. If they are talking about conversion software that allows songs purchased from the iTMS to be playable on other devices other than iPods/iTunes then Apple should sue.

I never saw a problem with licensing FairPlay to Real as the licensing fees could easily make up for lost revenue at the iTMS.

 

[ccuilla]

Okay folks. Calm down.

First of all, after reading the article, I am not certain that Apple has anything it can sue over. All that appears to be happening is that Real has come up with a clever way to make their DRM controlled songs work on the iPod. This doesn't mean that they have hacked or even reverse engineered FairPlay.

I am also unclear on what it means for Apple at this point. Perhaps nothing.

 

[niels]

padrino121:
...I imagine they just enforce the DRM themselves on it without having anything to do with the AAC FairPlay DRM...

This is something the record companies would never allow Real to do. The files created by Real are definately protected. From the descriptions I've read so far they are encrypted on the fly in a FairPlay compatible way when you transfer them to the iPod using RealPlayer.

lssmit02:
Just a small point, but if (and that's a big if) Real did reverse engineer FairPlay, there is a possibility that it is permitted under the DMCA. Sec. 1201(f) allows you to reverse engineer an encryption system for the purposes of allowing interoperability. I'm not an expert on exactly how this provision is intended to work, but it may be the legal loophole used by Real to get around Apple's DRM encryption system.

The DMCA does NOT prohibit reverse engineering at all. Reverse engineering is legal by default. The DMCA does prohibit the circumvention of FairPlay:

No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.

and

No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title

FairPlay would be the 'technological measure'. The song you bought in the iTMS would be the 'work protected'. Circumventions means:

to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner.

The questions are, did Real by reverse-engineering FairPlay do anything of the above? And does Real by offering a product that creates FairPlay-compatible files do anything of the above?

Unless Real illegally decrypted FairPlay files to find out how the process works, the answer is NO. Harmony in itself does not decrypt files bought from the iTMS. Nor does it bypass, remove, deactivate or impair the encryption on these songs. The Harmony technology in itself is NOT prohibited by the DMCA.

Even if Real did those things during the reverse engineering there is not a problem, because the DMCA specifically allows circumvention during reverse engineering of a program in order to achieve compatibility.

 

[MikeTheC]

So if I go to the store and see something I like but cannot have I should just steal it?

No, but if it's something you need you could build yourself (like, say a computer!)

Sometimes when I look at a catalog or go in a store, it gives me an idea that I can use and I will just make my own widget.

 

[bullrat]

Fantastic news. Go Real! Please license this everywhere and to everyone! My music, my way

 

[joeboy_45101]

This is something the record companies would never allow Real to do. The files created by Real are definately protected. From the descriptions I've read so far they are encrypted on the fly in a FairPlay compatible way when you transfer them to the iPod using RealPlayer.



The DMCA does NOT prohibit reverse engineering at all. Reverse engineering is legal by default. The DMCA does prohibit the circumvention of FairPlay:



and



FairPlay would be the 'technological measure'. The song you bought in the iTMS would be the 'work protected'. Circumventions means:



The questions are, did Real by reverse-engineering FairPlay do anything of the above? And does Real by offering a product that creates FairPlay-compatible files do anything of the above?

Unless Real illegally decrypted FairPlay files to find out how the process works, the answer is NO. Harmony in itself does not decrypt files bought from the iTMS. Nor does it bypass, remove, deactivate or impair the encryption on these songs. The Harmony technology in itself is NOT prohibited by the DMCA.

Even if Real did those things during the reverse engineering there is not a problem, because the DMCA specifically allows circumvention during reverse engineering of a program in order to achieve compatibility.

Not really, the iPod CAN play music without the help of FairPlay. MP3's personally encoded AAC, etc. The music files sold by Real could be grouped in that category. The iPod is designed to play both non-DRM music files and Apple FairPlay music files.

Real has done nothing wrong by making it's files play on the iPod. Apple cannot stop somebody from doing this, just as they cannot stop somebody from getting a version of Linux to run on the iPod. Once Apple has sold it to a customer that's it, Apple is no longer in control of how that product is used.

 

[niels]

joeboy_45101
Not really, the iPod CAN play music without the help of FairPlay. MP3's personally encoded AAC, etc. The music files sold by Real could be grouped in that category. The iPod is designed to play both non-DRM music files and Apple FairPlay music files.

Of course the iPod can play non-DRMed files, such as MP3 and plain AAC files. The thing is that the record companies would not allow Real to sell those non-DRMed files. Not even if Real would only allow us to use those files on the iPod. The record companies only allow on-line sales of their songs if they are protected by some kind of DRM.

This is how Real described it in their press release:

Generally speaking, Harmony supports any device that uses the Apple FairPlay DRM, The Microsoft Windows Media Audio DRM, or the RealNetworks Helix DRM, giving RealPlayer Music Store support for more secure devices than any other music store on the Internet. (Emphasis mine)

 

[krel]

I predict...

By the end of the week, Rob Glasser will be spitting bloody teeth into a gutter and wiping his mouth on the tattered sleeve of a grungy brown jacket picked up from goodwill after glorious STEVE came in on a white horse and obliterated his company, murdered his wife and children, and reduced him to picking up cans and roaming the streets for scraps of food.
Rob Glasser and his entire extended family for generations to come will continue to feel the sting of what he's done here and now, and I hope that the word "regret" will never fully describe his nightmarish agony.

 

[joeboy_45101]

By the end of the week, Rob Glasser will be spitting bloody teeth into a gutter and wiping his mouth on the tattered sleeve of a grungy brown jacket picked up from goodwill after glorious STEVE came in on a white horse and obliterated his company, murdered his wife and children, and reduced him to picking up cans and roaming the streets for scraps of food.
Rob Glasser and his entire extended family for generations to come will continue to feel the sting of what he's done here and now, and I hope that the word "regret" will never fully describe his nightmarish agony.

Why doesn't Apple just buy Real. It's not like Real is out of their league. This would definitely strengthen QuickTime.

 

[jeffgarden]

From Cnet:

Indeed, lawsuits have been sparked by similar previous cases. In one famous example, Atari Games subsidiary Tengen created cartridges that worked with Nintendo's NES game machine in the late 1980s, when Nintendo was barring any other company from doing so.

Nintendo sued and won when it was discovered that Tengen had obtained part of Nintendo's software code from the U.S. Copyright Office and used it to make its games compatible.

RealNetworks has staunchly maintained that it has not illegally used any of Apple's copyrighted software code, however.

"We certainly feel we have all the licenses and rights to do what we've done or we wouldn't have done it," RealNetworks' Wolpert said.

 

[iPC]

scare tactic

1. announce you can
2. release product without it
3. call SJ one last time
4. profit

either apple looks dumb in this... or they suck it up and make more money. how hard is that to figure out? ****ing iziots....

 

[neon]

By the end of the week, Rob Glasser will be spitting bloody teeth into a gutter and wiping his mouth on the tattered sleeve of a grungy brown jacket picked up from goodwill after glorious STEVE came in on a white horse and obliterated his company, murdered his wife and children, and reduced him to picking up cans and roaming the streets for scraps of food.
Rob Glasser and his entire extended family for generations to come will continue to feel the sting of what he's done here and now, and I hope that the word "regret" will never fully describe his nightmarish agony.

that is without doubt one of the silliest posts i've read on this board.

 

[ValiumLolliPoP]

why was my post deleted? I don't like being censored.

 

[The Man]

The Real issue

Question is, would iPod owners buy songs through Real? Will Mac users get Real support? I think that iPod will still use iTMS if they want to buy music online unless other stores can provide what Apple doesn't (maybe subscription model). Also, if Real licenses their converter to other companies it would do nothing good cause most companies use WMA and conversion means quality loss. But the real battle is not between Real and Apple, but between Apple and Microsoft because most stores use WMA. Apple is fortunate that the #1 player is the iPod and thus their store attracts customers. Real stands alone in their format and is simply desperate: They don't sell any players. Real is no real problem to Apple. We should focus on Microsoft because WMA is everywhere. Apple has iPod and that's why a closed iTMS and Fairplay makes sense. If iPod market share dwindles down and more songs will be sold through Microsoft compatible stores, then things would change. Yet all Apple has to do then is make iPod WMA compatible through a firmware upgrade. In the end, iPod sales is what is important to Apple, not the iTMS.

 

[Surreal]

Saying something like, "apple should have let real..."

apple stated a reason. a logical reason at that.

get over it.

Real should be sued...becuase if they really wanted to compete, htey would have simply made their own technology, abnd not tried to make it ipod compatible. THAT is competition.

intellectual property. anyone remember that?

 

[whooleytoo]

I can't really understand the big fuss over this - consider the possibilities:

- Harmony doesn't work correctly (either initially, or after an Apple 'update'). In this case, it's irrelevant.

- Harmony works, but few people avail of it. Again, it doesn't matter much as it will scarcely affect Apple. In fact, it might help Apple as the iPod will be seen as a more open platform.

- Harmony works and lots of people start listening to Harmony songs on iPod. iTunes sales may suffer, but the iPod would benefit - and we know how much money Apple makes on both!

I actually think the second option is the most likely - I still can't see many people using Real's store instead of iTunes. But it's a good move for consumers, and here's hoping it rattles a few cages in Apple..

 

[Beck446]

You all are really doing a great job exposing the undercurrent of Mac-user hypocracy. You can convince yourself otherwise, but you all really just want to see Apple dominate this market with a monopoly. There are a lot of reasons for wanting to see this, including the simple fact that Apple hasn't monopolized a market in 20 years, not to mention some sort of vague pride in being the first iPod owners, believing in the iPod early on, telling your friends about it, following the industry, liking the rumors, ect.

But you all still just want to see Apple in a Microsoft like position. It's a fool's game, and what happened today with Real proves it.

 

[ericmooreart]

I love Apple but...

I love Apple but sometimes they can be short sighted. I saw this coming. More music sources will be great for the ipod especially with CD copy protection becomimg more and more popular. Many of my PeeCee friends wana get a pod but they complain about compatability, and the larger music selection they could get with one of those other "crappy" players.

I predict Apple will change a line of code or two that will kill Harmony in the next ipod update. I'll still buy the new ipod...But then Apple already knew that right?