It wouldn't be any skin off my nose if Real were to go belly up. Then maybe content creators would get wise and select a streaming media format that's actually good, namely Quicktime.
I'm sorry, but did you just characterize Quicktime as a good streaming format?
Quicktime is possibly the worst streaming format known to man! It's even worse than RealPlayer. There is a reason no-one except Apple uses Quicktime to stream video. It's slow, it's overly glitchy and prone to that horrible green-mosaic effect and the player is crap. At least RealPlayer can maintain some sort of stream without degenerating into a mess of green blocks when two or three packets get dropped.
As far as Real's disclosures go, those are standard, SEC-mandated disclosures that any publicly-traded company is required to make.
The problem Apple has now is that it is number one in this space, and everyone is gunning for them. If some company were to come out today and engineer some technology that allows Protected WMA tracks to play on iPods, there wouldn't be much Apple could do about it except try to block it.
Well... unless that company were Microsoft, in which case Apple would sue and the Anti-Microsoft legal system would find in their favor.
I hate Real and their shitty, shitty products, but I do think it would be good for the iPod to accept other DRM schemes like Helix and Janus. Doing that would sell more iPods because customers wouldn't have to buy a Creative/Rio player to use services like Napster, Yahoo, etc.
More iPods sold would eventually mean more tracks sold at the iTMS, anyway, since users would still be using iTunes to load their iPods.
Edit: Real's reverse-engineering of FairPlay is pretty shady, though, for a mainstream company. It's cool when it comes from the users (i.e. Hymn), but not from competitors.
with all due respect. i think apple knows what they are doing in regards to mp3 plays -- just a hunch. Also there is a reason why you cant find the name "real" or "real networks" anywhere on the rhapsody website. Its becuase people hate real, they have for awhile. when people figure out that rhapsody = real, it will be all even further downhill for them.
message to REAL NETWORKS: you make shitty products, your proprietary real format is no longer used or useful. You use adware and spyware and charge money for what other companies provide for free. Whats more, you do illegal things, that you know are illegal. Comments like "we think we are legit, but the courts might not" prove this point.
message to REAL NETWORKS stockholders: Throw out the Real Executives and either turn your company around by making new solid and "original" products OR liquidate your company.
with all due respect. i think apple knows what they are doing in regards to mp3 plays -- just a hunch. Also there is a reason why you cant find the name "real" or "real networks" anywhere on the rhapsody website. Its becuase people hate real, they have for awhile. when people figure out that rhapsody = real, it will be all even further downhill for them.
message to REAL NETWORKS: you make shitty products, your proprietary real format is no longer used or useful. You use adware and spyware and charge money for what other companies provide for free. Whats more, you do illegal things, that you know are illegal. Comments like "we think we are legit, but the courts might not" prove this point.
message to REAL NETWORKS stockholders: Throw out the Real Executives and either turn your company around by making new solid and "original" products OR liquidate your company.
That's what Michael Dell said about Apple three or so years ago!
Edit: Real's reverse-engineering of FairPlay is pretty shady, though, for a mainstream company. It's cool when it comes from the users (i.e. Hymn), but not from competitors.
I'm happy to see Apple doing well with iTunes and iTMS, but I hate DRM and the attack on traditional fair use rights it represents.
If I were going to concede any legitimacy to DRM at all, it would be for its role in content protection -- protecting content and content only from infringing uses.
It's clear, however, that Apple and others want to use DRM for something else entirely -- market lock-in and protecting their own business models. That goes well beyond any conceivable proper DRM content protection purpose.
The DMCA contains some narrow provisions allowing reverse engineering of DRM for "interoperability". Of course, those provisions didn't stop the Justice Department for going after a Russian PhD student (Dmitri Sklyarov) for working on breaking Adobe's eBook DRM -- to help the blind read legitimately purchased eBooks!
That case never came to trial, however, so the validity of the law and the strength of an interoperability defense have never been really put to the test. (Sklyarov was eventually permitted to return to Russia, but he's technically still subject to prosecution if he ever returns to the US.)
At any rate, Real could well try to claim interoperability -- so this might not be so "shady" as it seems. I like Apple as a company much more than Real, but I don't fault Real for Harmony and I wish them luck with it.
I'm happy to see Apple doing well with iTunes and iTMS, but I hate DRM and the attack on traditional fair use rights it represents.
If I were going to concede any legitimacy to DRM at all, it would be for its role in content protection -- protecting content and content only from infringing uses.
It's clear, however, that Apple and others want to use DRM for something else entirely -- market lock-in and protecting their own business models. That goes well beyond any conceivable proper DRM content protection purpose.
The DMCA contains some narrow provisions allowing reverse engineering of DRM for "interoperability". Of course, those provisions didn't stop the Justice Department for going after a Russian PhD student (Dmitri Sklyarov) for working on breaking Adobe's eBook DRM -- to help the blind read legitimately purchased eBooks!
That case never came to trial, however, so the validity of the law and the strength of an interoperability defense have never been really put to the test. (Sklyarov was eventually permitted to return to Russia, but he's technically still subject to prosecution if he ever returns to the US.)
At any rate, Real could well try to claim interoperability -- so this might not be so "shady" as it seems. I like Apple as a company much more than Real, but I don't fault Real for Harmony and I wish them luck with it.
The provision must be understood first. Here's the part regarding reverse engineering;
2. Reverse engineering (section 1201(f)). This exception permits circumvention, and the development of technological means for such circumvention, by a person who has lawfully obtained a right to use a copy of a computer program for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing elements of the program necessary to achieve interoperability with other programs, to the extent that such acts are permitted under copyright law.
Essentially, this means that permission must be received from the holder of the copyrighted program to do so.
An infringing use is any use that the copyholder says that the licensee can't do.
Edit: There are a few fair use exceptions. But obtaining some of them is prohibited. Funky, huh?
Reading a lot of the posts, most of them are based on "Real sucks". What Real did is probably not very professional, but I like to see options, even if they are not necessarily the best. Had Microsoft been in the position of Apple everyone would have been screaming monopoly or antitrust. This whole issue of DRM is a real problem, since on the one hand it limits the options of users and on the other provides the company holding the keys a large amount of potentially anti-competitive control.
As a user I should be able to buy my music where I want and play it how I want. This is not the case with music with DRM and until the industry as a whole is forced to share solutions or come up with a universal one, we are all screwed. If you don't mind being locked in fair enough, but we don't all like being so.
I own an iPod and will not buy music from the iTunes store because of its monopoly position on the player, because of the DRM limiting what I can do (I know its fairly lax compared to some) and because the audio is provided in a lossy format. Until the industry can sort this out I am sticking to buying CDs, and then only those which have not been corrupted by some sort of "copy-protection".
The provision must be understood first. Here's the part regarding reverse engineering;
2. Reverse engineering (section 1201(f)). This exception permits circumvention, and the development of technological means for such circumvention, by a person who has lawfully obtained a right to use a copy of a computer program for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing elements of the program necessary to achieve interoperability with other programs, to the extent that such acts are permitted under copyright law.
Essentially, this means that permission must be received from the holder of the copyrighted program to do so.
An infringing use is any use that the copyholder says that the licensee can't do.
Edit: There are a few fair use exceptions. But obtaining some of them is prohibited. Funky, huh?
Actually, there's nothing there that say you need to get the permission from the holder. It just says you need to have obtained a right to use the program. I read the 'for the sole purpose' as discussing what and for what purpose you're allowed to reverse engineer.
To me, if you needed to get the permission of the copyright holder, then there's no need for this provision, since the copyright holder would have grant you the right, and such then you have an agreement and contract that allowed you to do this, so there'd be no violation.
Although, I guess it could be a matter of semantics, the lack of a comma after "computer program" irritates me and makes it confusing.
BTW, the courts recently ruled against Lexmark, I believe (might have been Brother) over using DCMA to protect a market. There, the printer company had computer chip they placed on a toner cartridge, which the printer checked for to see if it was a 'valid' cartridge. Someone reverse engineered the chip and was sued, the argument being they violated the DCMA. The courts ruled you can't use the DCMA in this way (although it might be under appeal, probably, knowing lawyers and the money-thieving printer companies and their overpriced cartridges).
Oh, and the thing about Real and harmony is that they aren't reverse engineering Fairplay to break the DRM (a violation), but in order to put the DRM on their music so they can play on the iPod.
Many of you may not be old enough to remember, but Real was first with streaming. Real Music was available in the dawn of the internet. Even though dial-up would cause the stream to go to lower bit-rates and sound bad, or distorted, or to even stop for a while, it was exciting at the time. The high quality version was 64Kb/sec. I got that with my ISDN connection where it worked very well. With dial-up you could get 32Kb/sec.
RealVideo was also one of the first. At one time it was thought that Apple might buy Real, but as usual, they went their own way.
As Real goes down in price... SOON will be the time for Apple to buy them. I think this would be an inexpensive way for Apple to get on all of those sites that only take wmp and RealPlayer. I agree with someone above that Real actually started out pretty good, but it fell to the MS Beast like all of the other companies that tried to compete between MS ubiquity and Apple pulchritude.
Real has got tons of servers that could be reconfigured for video streaming and downloads and there are a lot of good engineers that would probably give their eyeteeth to work on improving iPods and QT codecs. It would also be a good fortress near the heart of Redmond!
Actually, there's nothing there that say you need to get the permission from the holder. It just says you need to have obtained a right to use the program. I read the 'for the sole purpose' as discussing what and for what purpose you're allowed to reverse engineer.
To me, if you needed to get the permission of the copyright holder, then there's no need for this provision, since the copyright holder would have grant you the right, and such then you have an agreement and contract that allowed you to do this, so there'd be no violation.
Although, I guess it could be a matter of semantics, the lack of a comma after "computer program" irritates me and makes it confusing.
BTW, the courts recently ruled against Lexmark, I believe (might have been Brother) over using DCMA to protect a market. There, the printer company had computer chip they placed on a toner cartridge, which the printer checked for to see if it was a 'valid' cartridge. Someone reverse engineered the chip and was sued, the argument being they violated the DCMA. The courts ruled you can't use the DCMA in this way (although it might be under appeal, probably, knowing lawyers and the money-thieving printer companies and their overpriced cartridges).
Oh, and the thing about Real and harmony is that they aren't reverse engineering Fairplay to break the DRM (a violation), but in order to put the DRM on their music so they can play on the iPod.
I can't help how you respond to it, but that's what it means. Legal documents don't always sound logical and clear to the uninitiated. They can't break the DRM. That's clear and simple. The difficulty at this time is that it's all too new. It's "unsettled" law.
You can always get a contract. That 's what the copyright is for; to require a contract and permission. DRM is given a position higher than other rights. It's complex, but the Lexmark case is different. That involves two pieces of hardware. A printer and supplies. This is very different. Apple has legal contracts with the music suppliers to sell and put their music on iPods, and other devices that they and Apple have agreed upon. Real has contracts to sell music and put it on devices that they and Real have agreed upon. Real does NOT have contracts to put their music on Apple's devices, etc. The DRM is there to enforce the contracts. Music companies, like any other merchant has the right to make and demand enforcement of contracts.
It's always back to the same thing. If people didn't infringe the copyrights, there wouldn't be a need for this. People really don't understand how it works. You don't buy the music; you buy the medium upon which it's delivered, and license the music for your own use. You don't have the right to give copies away, or to recieve them. Before digital, it was tough to do that, and now it's not, so people think it's ok. If they didn't, we wouldn't need DRM.
Comments
Originally posted by Kolchak
It wouldn't be any skin off my nose if Real were to go belly up. Then maybe content creators would get wise and select a streaming media format that's actually good, namely Quicktime.
I'm sorry, but did you just characterize Quicktime as a good streaming format?
Quicktime is possibly the worst streaming format known to man! It's even worse than RealPlayer. There is a reason no-one except Apple uses Quicktime to stream video. It's slow, it's overly glitchy and prone to that horrible green-mosaic effect and the player is crap. At least RealPlayer can maintain some sort of stream without degenerating into a mess of green blocks when two or three packets get dropped.
The problem Apple has now is that it is number one in this space, and everyone is gunning for them. If some company were to come out today and engineer some technology that allows Protected WMA tracks to play on iPods, there wouldn't be much Apple could do about it except try to block it.
Well... unless that company were Microsoft, in which case Apple would sue and the Anti-Microsoft legal system would find in their favor.
Originally posted by geekdreams
I hate Real and their shitty, shitty products, but I do think it would be good for the iPod to accept other DRM schemes like Helix and Janus. Doing that would sell more iPods because customers wouldn't have to buy a Creative/Rio player to use services like Napster, Yahoo, etc.
More iPods sold would eventually mean more tracks sold at the iTMS, anyway, since users would still be using iTunes to load their iPods.
Edit: Real's reverse-engineering of FairPlay is pretty shady, though, for a mainstream company. It's cool when it comes from the users (i.e. Hymn), but not from competitors.
with all due respect. i think apple knows what they are doing in regards to mp3 plays -- just a hunch. Also there is a reason why you cant find the name "real" or "real networks" anywhere on the rhapsody website. Its becuase people hate real, they have for awhile. when people figure out that rhapsody = real, it will be all even further downhill for them.
message to REAL NETWORKS: you make shitty products, your proprietary real format is no longer used or useful. You use adware and spyware and charge money for what other companies provide for free. Whats more, you do illegal things, that you know are illegal. Comments like "we think we are legit, but the courts might not" prove this point.
message to REAL NETWORKS stockholders: Throw out the Real Executives and either turn your company around by making new solid and "original" products OR liquidate your company.
Originally posted by mike518
with all due respect. i think apple knows what they are doing in regards to mp3 plays -- just a hunch. Also there is a reason why you cant find the name "real" or "real networks" anywhere on the rhapsody website. Its becuase people hate real, they have for awhile. when people figure out that rhapsody = real, it will be all even further downhill for them.
message to REAL NETWORKS: you make shitty products, your proprietary real format is no longer used or useful. You use adware and spyware and charge money for what other companies provide for free. Whats more, you do illegal things, that you know are illegal. Comments like "we think we are legit, but the courts might not" prove this point.
message to REAL NETWORKS stockholders: Throw out the Real Executives and either turn your company around by making new solid and "original" products OR liquidate your company.
That's what Michael Dell said about Apple three or so years ago!
Originally posted by geekdreams
Edit: Real's reverse-engineering of FairPlay is pretty shady, though, for a mainstream company. It's cool when it comes from the users (i.e. Hymn), but not from competitors.
I'm happy to see Apple doing well with iTunes and iTMS, but I hate DRM and the attack on traditional fair use rights it represents.
If I were going to concede any legitimacy to DRM at all, it would be for its role in content protection -- protecting content and content only from infringing uses.
It's clear, however, that Apple and others want to use DRM for something else entirely -- market lock-in and protecting their own business models. That goes well beyond any conceivable proper DRM content protection purpose.
The DMCA contains some narrow provisions allowing reverse engineering of DRM for "interoperability". Of course, those provisions didn't stop the Justice Department for going after a Russian PhD student (Dmitri Sklyarov) for working on breaking Adobe's eBook DRM -- to help the blind read legitimately purchased eBooks!
That case never came to trial, however, so the validity of the law and the strength of an interoperability defense have never been really put to the test. (Sklyarov was eventually permitted to return to Russia, but he's technically still subject to prosecution if he ever returns to the US.)
At any rate, Real could well try to claim interoperability -- so this might not be so "shady" as it seems. I like Apple as a company much more than Real, but I don't fault Real for Harmony and I wish them luck with it.
Originally posted by shetline
I'm happy to see Apple doing well with iTunes and iTMS, but I hate DRM and the attack on traditional fair use rights it represents.
If I were going to concede any legitimacy to DRM at all, it would be for its role in content protection -- protecting content and content only from infringing uses.
It's clear, however, that Apple and others want to use DRM for something else entirely -- market lock-in and protecting their own business models. That goes well beyond any conceivable proper DRM content protection purpose.
The DMCA contains some narrow provisions allowing reverse engineering of DRM for "interoperability". Of course, those provisions didn't stop the Justice Department for going after a Russian PhD student (Dmitri Sklyarov) for working on breaking Adobe's eBook DRM -- to help the blind read legitimately purchased eBooks!
That case never came to trial, however, so the validity of the law and the strength of an interoperability defense have never been really put to the test. (Sklyarov was eventually permitted to return to Russia, but he's technically still subject to prosecution if he ever returns to the US.)
At any rate, Real could well try to claim interoperability -- so this might not be so "shady" as it seems. I like Apple as a company much more than Real, but I don't fault Real for Harmony and I wish them luck with it.
The provision must be understood first. Here's the part regarding reverse engineering;
2. Reverse engineering (section 1201(f)). This exception permits circumvention, and the development of technological means for such circumvention, by a person who has lawfully obtained a right to use a copy of a computer program for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing elements of the program necessary to achieve interoperability with other programs, to the extent that such acts are permitted under copyright law.
Essentially, this means that permission must be received from the holder of the copyrighted program to do so.
An infringing use is any use that the copyholder says that the licensee can't do.
Edit: There are a few fair use exceptions. But obtaining some of them is prohibited. Funky, huh?
As a user I should be able to buy my music where I want and play it how I want. This is not the case with music with DRM and until the industry as a whole is forced to share solutions or come up with a universal one, we are all screwed. If you don't mind being locked in fair enough, but we don't all like being so.
I own an iPod and will not buy music from the iTunes store because of its monopoly position on the player, because of the DRM limiting what I can do (I know its fairly lax compared to some) and because the audio is provided in a lossy format. Until the industry can sort this out I am sticking to buying CDs, and then only those which have not been corrupted by some sort of "copy-protection".
Originally posted by melgross
The provision must be understood first. Here's the part regarding reverse engineering;
2. Reverse engineering (section 1201(f)). This exception permits circumvention, and the development of technological means for such circumvention, by a person who has lawfully obtained a right to use a copy of a computer program for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing elements of the program necessary to achieve interoperability with other programs, to the extent that such acts are permitted under copyright law.
Essentially, this means that permission must be received from the holder of the copyrighted program to do so.
An infringing use is any use that the copyholder says that the licensee can't do.
Edit: There are a few fair use exceptions. But obtaining some of them is prohibited. Funky, huh?
Actually, there's nothing there that say you need to get the permission from the holder. It just says you need to have obtained a right to use the program. I read the 'for the sole purpose' as discussing what and for what purpose you're allowed to reverse engineer.
To me, if you needed to get the permission of the copyright holder, then there's no need for this provision, since the copyright holder would have grant you the right, and such then you have an agreement and contract that allowed you to do this, so there'd be no violation.
Although, I guess it could be a matter of semantics, the lack of a comma after "computer program" irritates me and makes it confusing.
BTW, the courts recently ruled against Lexmark, I believe (might have been Brother) over using DCMA to protect a market. There, the printer company had computer chip they placed on a toner cartridge, which the printer checked for to see if it was a 'valid' cartridge. Someone reverse engineered the chip and was sued, the argument being they violated the DCMA. The courts ruled you can't use the DCMA in this way (although it might be under appeal, probably, knowing lawyers and the money-thieving printer companies and their overpriced cartridges).
Oh, and the thing about Real and harmony is that they aren't reverse engineering Fairplay to break the DRM (a violation), but in order to put the DRM on their music so they can play on the iPod.
Originally posted by melgross
You know, it's all really very sad about Real.
Many of you may not be old enough to remember, but Real was first with streaming. Real Music was available in the dawn of the internet. Even though dial-up would cause the stream to go to lower bit-rates and sound bad, or distorted, or to even stop for a while, it was exciting at the time. The high quality version was 64Kb/sec. I got that with my ISDN connection where it worked very well. With dial-up you could get 32Kb/sec.
RealVideo was also one of the first. At one time it was thought that Apple might buy Real, but as usual, they went their own way.
As Real goes down in price... SOON will be the time for Apple to buy them. I think this would be an inexpensive way for Apple to get on all of those sites that only take wmp and RealPlayer. I agree with someone above that Real actually started out pretty good, but it fell to the MS Beast like all of the other companies that tried to compete between MS ubiquity and Apple pulchritude.
Real has got tons of servers that could be reconfigured for video streaming and downloads and there are a lot of good engineers that would probably give their eyeteeth to work on improving iPods and QT codecs. It would also be a good fortress near the heart of Redmond!
Originally posted by Louzer
Actually, there's nothing there that say you need to get the permission from the holder. It just says you need to have obtained a right to use the program. I read the 'for the sole purpose' as discussing what and for what purpose you're allowed to reverse engineer.
To me, if you needed to get the permission of the copyright holder, then there's no need for this provision, since the copyright holder would have grant you the right, and such then you have an agreement and contract that allowed you to do this, so there'd be no violation.
Although, I guess it could be a matter of semantics, the lack of a comma after "computer program" irritates me and makes it confusing.
BTW, the courts recently ruled against Lexmark, I believe (might have been Brother) over using DCMA to protect a market. There, the printer company had computer chip they placed on a toner cartridge, which the printer checked for to see if it was a 'valid' cartridge. Someone reverse engineered the chip and was sued, the argument being they violated the DCMA. The courts ruled you can't use the DCMA in this way (although it might be under appeal, probably, knowing lawyers and the money-thieving printer companies and their overpriced cartridges).
Oh, and the thing about Real and harmony is that they aren't reverse engineering Fairplay to break the DRM (a violation), but in order to put the DRM on their music so they can play on the iPod.
I can't help how you respond to it, but that's what it means. Legal documents don't always sound logical and clear to the uninitiated. They can't break the DRM. That's clear and simple. The difficulty at this time is that it's all too new. It's "unsettled" law.
You can always get a contract. That 's what the copyright is for; to require a contract and permission. DRM is given a position higher than other rights. It's complex, but the Lexmark case is different. That involves two pieces of hardware. A printer and supplies. This is very different. Apple has legal contracts with the music suppliers to sell and put their music on iPods, and other devices that they and Apple have agreed upon. Real has contracts to sell music and put it on devices that they and Real have agreed upon. Real does NOT have contracts to put their music on Apple's devices, etc. The DRM is there to enforce the contracts. Music companies, like any other merchant has the right to make and demand enforcement of contracts.
It's always back to the same thing. If people didn't infringe the copyrights, there wouldn't be a need for this. People really don't understand how it works. You don't buy the music; you buy the medium upon which it's delivered, and license the music for your own use. You don't have the right to give copies away, or to recieve them. Before digital, it was tough to do that, and now it's not, so people think it's ok. If they didn't, we wouldn't need DRM.
As I say, it's very different.