Real Networks Hacks iPod; .rm & Real Store for iPod 456
alphakappa writes "According to Cnet, Real Networks is expected to announce on Monday that it has found a way to make its songs play on the iPod. Now songs bought from the RealPlayer Music Store can be played on the iPod. Earlier Real had made it possible for songs bought from iTunes to be played on RealPlayer by transparently starting the iTunes authentication in the background. However since Apple has not licensed the technology to make file formats playable on the iPod, the latest Real initiative could be construed as reverse engineering. How would this fare under the DMCA? Or is it just for the tiny ones?"
Makes you think... (Score:5, Insightful)
If they can figure out how to play their format on the iPod, I say more power to them.
Apple Stick it to them (Score:3, Insightful)
What possible reason...? (Score:5, Insightful)
After all, the DMCA wasn't designed to protect copyrights -- it was designed to prevent competition.
The difference between this and PlayFair (Score:4, Insightful)
The DMCA allows reverse engineering for compatibility, so maybe Real does have a case here.
Does the RealPlayer music store have... (Score:3, Insightful)
store content (Score:5, Insightful)
Does the Real store have any songs that the iTunes store doesn't? Have there been a lot of Real customers clamoring for this?
This sounds like total PR BS from Real - they are just mad that Apple (rightly) gave them the brush-off earlier, and they are under the mistaken impression that Apple or iPod users give a hoot about RealMedia format. I mean, if you have an ipod and use iTunes already, what possible reason could you have for wanting to put
Re:Get your IP law straight (Score:5, Insightful)
Much better is if... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't want Real to get hurt -- that serves no purpose. I just want the DMCA weakened or repealed. If damage done to Real helps to bring that about, well and good! -- but otherwise, it's quite unkind to wish for another to be harmed.
As far as I'm concerned, far from a big mistake, Real did the right thing; think of it as civil disobediance on a corporate scale. Let's just hope some good comes of it.
Re:What possible reason...? (Score:2, Insightful)
NOTE: Both the Clinton and Bush administrations have signed copyright laws into effect. Even the DMCA was signed under Clinton's presidency. So you'll have to vote Green or some other left-left-wing party if you want to revoke some of these laws.
Re:store content (Score:3, Insightful)
Possibly legal, not Exactly Reverse Engineering? (Score:2, Insightful)
In which case, if the community were to create an open, free software DRM spec, it would then be possible to create free software that could legally, and without violating DMCA/EUCD smunge
So, provided the player code is distributed in a form which respects the DRM information therein, it would also not be a violation of DMCA/EUCD.
Thus we would have a legal FLOSS
Of course, my reasoning is probably rubbish, based on assumptions and caveats and legal cases that haven't yet happened.
It was just an idea.
Well, to be fair... (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple doesn't license their protected formats, true; but if Real wants to sell us a nice, standard MP3 or uncompressed WAV file, the iPod would happily play it.
What.
Re:Apple Stick it to them (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Apple should let them fail in public (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't see how that's a major PR victory, that's just not being evil assholes.
We're already screwed if we think it's a PR win when someone *doesn't* wave the big stick of DMCA.
Re:Apple Stick it to them (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you kinda mist the point of the parent...
I think, what the poster was trying to say, was that Real, if they really wanted some of the iPod market, could simply sell non-DRM'ed tunes.
Which really would be a victory for the consumer
Re:Get your IP law straight (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple have got to be laughing at this. (Score:5, Insightful)
It was last November [theregister.co.uk] when Steve Jobs admitted that Apple made no money from the iTunes Music Store, and that pretty much all the money goes to the labels. Sure, in the six months since some more economies of scale may have kicked in, but we've heard nothing to contradict this yet:
Apple will always have the advantage in the music store -> iPod battle because the iPod needs iTunes, and iTunes has the music store built in. So Apple remains the first stop for people looking for something to play on an iPod, by definition.
Meanwhile, we're supposed to believe that Apple are somehow worried because Real have taken a bite into this profit-shy business in order to give people another way they can put music on an iPod, thus allowing Apple to maybe ship more units? I can't quite imagine Steve Jobs crying into his breakfast cereal over that one.
Of course, Apple have an opportunity here: the opportunity being the chance to extract license fees for putting Real's software on the iPod. They can wave around the threat of the DMCA and an expensive lawsuit for a while. Then they can pull out the carrot of integration: giving Real the chance to put their player on the iPod without having it break every time the iPod software was updated. Meanwhile Apple get some nice pocket-change in licensing fees, and the chance to deflect some WMA heat by waving the banner of a more open music-playing platform.
Charles Miller
Re:For the uneducated and uninformed... (Score:1, Insightful)
maybe opening up rar files with gzip is simply a matter of fooling gzip into thinking that rar files are gzip files. uhh, not.
my money is on real having read DVD-Jon's code [videolan.org] to find out how to write FairPlay files.
Re:What possible reason...? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just how? Certainly they never sign such. It'd be good if this lead to a test in court of the validity of shrinkwrap licences so beloved of software companies.
Re:Makes you think... (Score:1, Insightful)
Although the company said this action wasn't technically "reverse engineering," the software could trigger intense legal scrutiny.
The license accompanying Apple's iPod says purchasers cannot "copy, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, (or) attempt to derive the source code of" the software.
RTFA. Real's engineers certainly had to obtain iTunes and an iPod to make this happen. When they did so, they agreed to the license accompanying the iPod. To spite what Real says, when they say "re-create their own version in their labs" that means reverse engineer! I've never heard such a lie. They'd have us believe they sat some engineers down in a room who had never looked at an iPod or iTunes (much less crack them) but yet were somehow able to "recreate their own version"? BULL shit. Off to jail, fuckers.
Re:Possibly legal, not Exactly Reverse Engineering (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, IANAL either, but my understanding is that if Apple doesn't sue Real, there isn't legal confirmation of anything. Of course, if Apple sued and lost, that would be a precedent case for a certain type of DRM circumvention to be allowed. However, I'd expect Apple to win if they sue.
Update (Score:5, Insightful)
It'd be good if this lead to a test in court of the validity of shrinkwrap licences
More likely, Apple will release a iPod update with COOL NEW FEATURES L@@K which oh yeah, btw, breaks compatibility with real-purchased songs.
So then your iPod will not play your Real purchased library, until Real reverse-engineers it again, and who knows how long that'd take. So you'd have perhaps hundreds of dollars of songs on your iPod that you couldn't get to for an indefinite period of time; and Apple would just shrug their shoulders when you complain.
Re:What possible reason...? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, it's quite awesome how easily they can now hide and cower everytime someone says "copyright violation". Just the hint of something "bad" and they remove it from view. We wouldn't want to have anyone say bad things about corporations, now would we? We wouldn't want freedom of expression to be free from the interference of anyone with enough cash to pay a lawyer to send a onepage letter to an ISP and easily remove anything they don't like from the internet, now would we?
That "protection" is bullshit, because it gives the power of censure to the ISPs, which means to anyone who complains and has some cash.
Re:What possible reason...? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not a lawyer but I believe the whole corporation as an entity thing is there to protect consumers. If it wasn't an entity I don't think it could be sued.
Re:Apple have got to be laughing at this. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure you're right. Apple has little motive to partner up with other music stores, but it also has little to worry about from other companies supporting the iPod. A greater worry for Apple would be if someone made another MP3 player that could work with iTMS. But then again, the iPod was successful before iTMS, so I'm not sure that would be super-damaging either.
Re:What possible reason...? (Score:5, Insightful)
How the fuck are these mutually exclusive? Are you a real lawyer, or do you just play one on T.V.?
The fact that the DMCA burdens fair use is not just "a bit of a bummer," it's the total failure of our legislature. As a previous poster stated, the DMCA does not protect copyright: all it takes is a SINGLE CIRCUMVENTION ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD, and then the song is an unencumbered mp3 ready to be shared with everyone. There IS NO IMPETUS to traffic in a true circumvention device when you can traffic in the copyrighted material instead. Therefore the only circumvention devices taht are truly restricted are ones that have lawful (non-infringing) purposes! All the DMCA does is protect frightened corporations from free market competition.
In other words, it screws the electorate to prop up the corporations. Isn't this a bit backwards? Shouldn't the corporations exist to serve the people, a la Adam Smith? Else why have them?
Finally, how do you expect elections to fix the sorry, broken excuse for a law if you "hate the sheer disgust associated with [it]"? That sheer disgust is what gets the politicians to listen, or what votes them out if they don't.
The bigger story is yet to come (Score:4, Insightful)
'course, if everyone just sold plain MP3s, we wouldn't have to deal with any of this crap.
Two comments (Score:1, Insightful)
Secondly, what are the legal implications of converting one DRM scheme to another? If the DRM schemes aren't compatable, then whose to say that the rights you have with a file encoded with one DRM scheme will apply when you convert the file to another scheme? Do all the schemes impose restrictions unilaterally? If not, then Real's technology actually currupts the DRM (possibly less restrictions) for the sake of making the file work on more players. That might be great for Real, since they can say "we write the restrictions, and you can use this file anywhere you want", but it might not be all that great for other content providers who want to duplicate Real's technology so they can get their content on to more devices. They would have no way of knowing if their DRM gets enforced the way they want it to because the don't know what device the file is intended for.
I guess I can summerize the last paragraph with the question: is Harmony's DRM-conversion technlogy lossless conversion?
Re:What possible reason...? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, under current law. If hardware contains software, and the manufacturer sees fit to place a license on the software, and there's no way to get around the software, then you have to agree to the license to use the hardware.
I seem to recall a /. story from a few months ago where someone bought a Windows preloaded Dell computer with the intention of using Linux on it. When the person turned it on with his Linux install disk in the drive, he was presented with an un-circumventable software licence agreement screen, which basically stated that by agreeing, he was agreeing to the licenses of all the preloaded software on the machine. Presumably the only way to get past it to load Linux was by clicking OK
The person at Dell support couldn't figure out why the guy wouldn't just click OK, even though the tech couldn't tell him what was in each individual license that he was supposed to blanket-agree with. Ultimately he ended up sending the computer back.
We need legal precidence on the legality of software license agreements, and exactly what obligations that all parties are under. Until this happens, we're going to continue to see unresonable and silly licenses.
Re:Possibility? (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't, however, say anything about the FairPlay DRM. Indeed FairPlay is listed as an Apple trademark, and Apple claims it as their own technology. There is no mention of this being licensed, so that would imply that they do own it.
See:
http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/au
Now there is much speculation that FairPlay was licensed from Veridisc, since that company was developing a DRM system called "Fairplay". However the only evidence of this is speculation from web pundits who have done a search on "Fairplay" and come up with Veridisc's web site. There is no press release from either company on a license agreement - one would have thought Veridisc would want to shout about this. There's also, apparently, no record of any payments being made to Veridisc by Apple for a license fee, or purchasing the company, in their accounts.
The REAL problem... (Score:3, Insightful)
This could do more damage to the Real brand, by promoting a particular aspect of their software that is behaves inconsistently.
Re:Makes you think... (Score:4, Insightful)
It really only depends how Real was able to do it. There are three avenues Apple can sue them if they choose. 1) Breach of License, 2) IP violations, 3) DMCA.
1) In order for Real to get rm files to work on an iPod, there had to have been some serious internal hacking of an iPod. Mostly like the Real teams bought a few iPods for this purpose. Apple like many other manufacturers may have no reverse-enginnering clauses built into their license agreements. In doing so, however, Real may have broken any license agreement they had when they bought the iPod.
2) If I remember correctly, in order to reverse engineering to be legal, there has to be separation between the two teams that work on the engineering. The two teams cannot have direct communication with each other except for specifications:
The first team may break down the device but can only describe the functionality of the device like an API to the second team. (When the left button is pressed, the device should . . .) The second team designs the device based on specifications from the first team.
If Apple can show that there was no Chinese wall between the two teams or that the reverse-engineering could not have happened without breaching the separation, they may have a case. 3) And of course, if there is any encryption was cracked, then the DMCA is relevant. I'm not condoning this use, only stating the obvious.
Re:Makes you think... (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe, if Fairplay were an open standard. But it isn't- it is a proprietary standard that Apple reserves the right to license to others and I see no basis for the legal system to NOT uphold this right. If someone desires this interoperability, there is a correct way to appoach it- they can license the technology. Of course, Apple probably wouldn't want any association with Real, so luckily they also reserve the right not to do business with them.
Re:all formats (Score:2, Insightful)
What is it? Nothing that I can see they've said. (Score:3, Insightful)
You can play lots of formats on an iPod. All Real (or anyone else) has to do is remove any DMA restrictions on their AAC files and the job is done. Now, if they are saying that they process their files so that they are protected AAC (FairPlay) and will play on the iPod then there might be an issue.
If Real was saying that you could take FairPlay protected tracks purchased from iTMS and play them on some other device then they would likely have a very serious problem. Simply saying that they can now "process" files purchased from their store to play on an iPod is meaningless. Of course, their sources could dry up if it turns out that they are unprotecting their tracks, but that wouldn't be Apple's problem.
Way to miss the point (Score:1, Insightful)
If its proprietary, you have to reverse engineer.
And the law of the land says you can reverse engineer for interoperability.
Real wants to Interoperate with the iPod.
Hello? McFly?
Just because you're trying to defend apple at any cost doesn't mean that you can pretend new laws exist to support your somewhat bizarre world view.
Seriously. not flaming, but you seem emotionally encumbered by apple. Get over it.
Dilemma: Real Player for OS X (Score:3, Insightful)
On the other hand, as long as there's money to be made by supporting Macs, they probably will -- especially with so many of Apple's users in the media industry. So maybe this is a non-issue.
This is a complex moral battle for me
1984 (Score:3, Insightful)
As far corporations having little public oversight, you should know that in free market economics, the public has ultimate oversight over everything. For example, if the public at large decided they didn't agree with Wal-Marts practices, they would stop buying products from them. As a result, Wal-Mart would either amend their practices, or go out of business. And don't say that information about Wal-Mart is censured, because anyone who isn't living under a rock can't even go outside without hearing about how bad Wal-Mart is.
As far a lawyers deciding that a corporation was an entity, that was meant to allow corporations to be sued. If they weren't an entity, they'd have no liability at all! I know you'd rather be able to sue them and not allow them to defend themselves, but it simply doesn't work that way.
As far as corporations not having a "natural lifespan, a brain, or a moral sense", you should know that corporations are run by people, and those people have at least two of the things you mentioned above. Assuming a corporation were run by people with moral sense, the corporation itself would have those properties as well.
The real problem with corporations is investors. If a corporation's CEO doesn't increase marked share, and profits, shareholders remove them and get someone else. As a result, many corporations and up being run by the most evil, unscrupulous people shareholders can find. Of course, most shareholders don't pay attention to the companies they invest in except to note their profits and share price. Many mutual fund owners don't even know where their money is invested, they only care that the fund performs well. I think Steve Jobs had it right when he said that their share price/ market share/ profits weren't really important. That sure hurt Apple's stock price though. Responsible investment all the way.
2 simple points to consider (Score:2, Insightful)