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August 17, 2004

Real Hypocritical

RealNetworks has decided to go all out in their war with Apple's iTunes, hacking up a faux grassroots protest/community site that supposedly disseminates unbiased information for consumers to choose which DRM basket they want to put all their eggs in. It looks like they have cherry-picked only online articles that support their position, and leave no way to actually communicate with other users on the site.

Keep in mind that this is coming from Real, one of the most closed-format, proprietary, un-consumer friendly companies making media software today.

Oh, and keep in mind, their service is still unavailable on the Apple Mac platform. Freedom of choice indeed.

Freedom of Music Choice :: Freedom of choice is what you want!

RealNetworks today announced its new music sale to kick off the Freedom of Choice campaign. For a limited time only, every song in the RealPlayer Music Store will be available for $0.50 cents--with most albums available for $5. "This limited time sale celebrates the Freedom of Choice made possible by the release of the free RealPlayer 10.5, the first product that integrates Real's revolutionary new Harmony Technology. RealPlayer with Harmony enables consumers to buy and download music that plays on more than 100 portable devices, including the Apple iPod." RealNetworks will also rolling out an extensive US national print, radio, and online advertising campaign and a new web-based community, which it says will "provide a forum where consumers can learn about compatibility issues and discuss the issues with other digital music fans."

Posted by nothingistrue at August 17, 2004 09:08 AM

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Comments

ha ha... they even had a petition on the site to get people to sign in support of their Harmony software... unfortunately, almost all signatures were from Apple supporters, so they pulled the link to it. you can still see it here:
http://www.petitiononline.com

Posted by: jeremy at August 17, 2004 09:20 AM

and in the meantime, a counter petition has been started:

http://www.petitiononline.com/notreal/

Posted by: jeremy at August 17, 2004 12:45 PM

read through this post by jon gruber over at daring fireball to get the final word on what real really wants, and why Apple is right.

Posted by: jeremy at August 17, 2004 02:34 PM

they also have Devo shilling for them in what seems to be a highly scripted testimonial/interview. if you'd like to voice your distaste with Devo linking their name with this ridiculous venture, you can write to them through this address: info@clubdevo.com

Posted by: jeremy at August 18, 2004 12:33 AM

more well written in depth analysis:
http://www.bynkii.com/

Posted by: jeremy at August 18, 2004 02:22 PM

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