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As a bard once wrote: ...and get ready cuz this shit's about to get heavy.... So now Real has launched a website to help it defend poor, innocent downtrodden iPod users: Freedom of Music Choice!, Motto: Freedom of choice is what you want! How noble Real is in its aims! How egalitarian Real is in its desire to help out poor iPod users enslaved by the shackles of TEBAA! (The Evil Bastards At Apple) How brave Real is to take on the menace that is Steve Jobs, arch-enemy of Freedom of Music choice... How utterly and totally full of crap they are, and for this much blatant hypocrisy, they should be chased o'er the ends of the Earth by Molly Malone and her nine blind orphan children until the Almighty himself couldn't find them with a radio telescope.

Let's understand one thing here. Real doesn't care about openness. They never have. In fact, their entire business model has always been about locking you into their stuff, and vacuuming your pockets as hard and fast as possible. Example? One component of one of their packages, an enterprise management package for 500 users runs about $15K, and that's with a 19% package discount. Note: This is not the full package price, and we haven't bought any hardware yet.

Windows Media Servers are the cost of Windows 2003 Enterprise Server, and hardware. It's less than $15K. (how much exactly? Hard to say, since Windows licensing is about as convoluted as the thought processes of Charles Manson...as he's learning Gaelic.)

QuickTime Streaming Server? $500, or $1000, plus hardware. Darwin Streaming Server? Free, plus hardware.

Ever try to download the free version of RealPlayer? Hurts like hell it does. For anyone new to Real, it used to be worse. A lot worse. The only place Real supports openness is the end of its foot. It'll use open standards to get that foot in your door.

Then it's a couple roophies in your coffee, and you wake up feeling dirty, and with a $100K PO on it's way to Rob Glaser. So why the scam then? Because children, Real Networks is in the position of being what we professionals like to call screwed. They don't have a market anymore. They pissed it way with a level of arrogance, greed, and money-grubbing stupidity so astounding in its short-sightedness as to make Quark customer support look like Mary Poppins. They shook down their customers like an English Au Pair, and got away with it for about a decade, because for years and years, it was Real, or nothing.

It was bound to end, and it has, with Star Trek - like speed. First QuickTime, and then, and more damagingly, Windows Media not only gave people a choice in streaming media, but didn't screw them over while they did it. They didn't charge them exorbitant fees and lock them into contracts that make even Satan bow in awe. So now, what's left for Real's market. On the server side? Not much. Maybe serving existing customers. Any CIO buying a Real system should be placed under psychiatric evaluation, then fired, because they're crazy and stupid.

What about the client market? Well, that's come down to online music, and it's real rough. They can't compete in the Windows Media Audio, (WMA) market, because that's saturated with names like Napster, Wal-Mart, MusicMatch, and soon, Microsoft. We all know who wins fighting Microsoft for Windows users.

Sony's a closed book. Totally. Sony's toy only plays ATRAC.

Real hasn't had a chance on the Mac since SoundJam. It's not closed, it's just that they suck so badly that no sane Mac user would give up iTunes for Real Player. So the only thing left is the iPod, and only those owned by Windows users and Real figured something out...they could totally bullshit people on this.

They could play on the annoyance that Windows users have about not being able to make Napster, Wal-Mart, or MusicMatch work with the iPod. They could create a total non-issue and look like a Force For Good.

So they lied.

That's right.

They lied.

They have deliberately made statements that are untrue. They didn't do this out of ignorance, or anything else. They want to mislead people. First of all, their claim that the iPod is somehow a locked system is ridiculous. The iPod plays AAC, MP3, FairPlay AAC, AIF, WMA, WAV, and Apple Lossless. Anyone can use those formats. AAC is open. Panasonic has at least one AAC - compatible player. Heck Real even uses AAC, so it's obviously available for use by people who aren't Apple.

Hmm...well then it's getting music on the iPod that's locked to Apple. Hardly...take a look at VersionTracker under available software for the iPod. There's a plethora of people manipulating music on iPods. It's not that hard. Apple may not support it, but it's doable, and without great Agony. If Real wanted to, they could write their own jukebox for their stuff, run it on OS X, and have it talk to the iPod with no problems. Hell, thanks to Apple Events, they could even show you what you have in iTunes, and if they really wanted to, they could have their application use Apple Events, (or whatever the Windows Version is) to transfer music into iTunes automagically, thereby giving all the iPod users of the world the ability to use Real's music store on their iPods now.

The only thing that's locked is FairPlay. There's one device that can use FairPlay: the iPod. There's one digital music application that can use FairPlay: iTunes. There's one media architecture that can use FairPlay: QuickTime.

The only hard part for Real is getting their DRM to work on the iPod. The Pixo OS is at least somewhat hackable, but adding DRM to the iPod may not be doable. So, the only problem for Real is DRM. So, since RIAA insists on DRM, they aren't getting non - DRM'd stuff on the iPod. The next logical step is to see if they can somehow hack FairPlay legitimately. There are ways to do this that don't involve reverse - engineering or other things that makes the DMCA flustered and stern.

That's what they did. But then, the bullshit meter pegs. They market this as a way of "Freeing iPod users from the tyranny of TEBAA!" (TEBAA = The Evil Bastards At Apple) They're doing this as a way to free iPod users from the horrors of a locked platform. What.The.Hell? So they expect Windows iPod users to be stupid enough to believe that the iPod is locked to iTunes music, (it isn't) or that they somehow are missing out of a great big world of music that isn't on the iTMS, (even if you could only play iTMS songs on the iPod, the iTMS has a million songs or so. There's not much that's missing from my POV.), and that Apple, and Steve Jobs are anti - open standards.

Well, you can get Windows users to believe some pretty hysterical crap, so I can see that line of thought. What's even worse is that Real expects Mac iPod users to be even stupider , because you can't use Harmony on a Mac, heck you've never been able to use the Real Music store on a Mac. If you log in to Real's home page with a Mac user - agent ID in your browser, you can't even see that there is a Real Music store. So Real is effectively trying to lock Mac users out of this wonderful world of choice. What's astounding is that in all the interviews with Real, no one is asking them about this. The most pathetic thing is all the bobble-heads on Rob Glaser's dashboard nodding in agreement without even trying to dig into this diarrheal discharge of falsehoods and deception. It's all crap. Real's just bullshitting their user base, the same way they have for a decade or so. They just changed the buzzwords is all.

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