RealNetworks, Inc. (NASDAQ:RNWK) has announced a new software called Rinse. Rinse software takes your iTunes music collection and cleans it up. It cleans up song duplicates, fixes misspellings, and adds missing album art.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs will be called in for an antitrust dispute alleging that his company is a music-downloading monopoly. The complaint was filed in 2005 and lawyers gained permission to conduct limited questioning of Steve Jobs under an order that was issued yesterday by U.S. Magistrate Judge Howard R. Lloyd.

RealNetworks, Inc. (NASDAQ:RNWK) has bought out Canadian social gaming company Backstage Technologies. The deal will add valuable game engineering and monetize expertise to RealNetworks’ gaming unit GameHouse according to the company.

RealNetworks, Inc. (NASDAQ:RNWK) said that they are going to shut down their RealDVD software and pay $4.5 million in legal costs to the movie studios. “Until this dispute, Real had always enjoyed a productive working relationship with Hollywood,” stated RealNetworks President and acting CEO Bob Kimball. “With this litigation resolved, I hope that in the future we can find mutually beneficial ways to use Real technology to bring Hollywood’s great work to consumers.” RealNetworks will be refunding the 2,700 customers that bought RealDVD. [TechFlash via Techmeme]

RealNetworks Inc.’s paid streaming music service Rhapsody has been surprisingly approved on iTunes. Considering the amount of bandwidth that application possibly requires to work, Apple seems to be pretty lenient. Apple is also the #1 music retailer so allow a competitor into the system comes even more as a surprise. Apple generally rejects applications that would interfere with their business.

The application download is free, but new subscribers will have to pay $14.99 per month if they want to use the application for more than 7 days. Rhapsody users will be able to stream music from a collection of over 8 million songs. Rhapsody will work as long as the user is getting a cellphone signal or WiFi.

RealNetworks’ streaming music software Rhapsody-To-Go will be submitted to the Apple App Store for approval this week.  When the application gets approved, Rhapsody customers will be able to access on-demand streaming of over 8 million tracks within the company’s library through 3G and WiFi connections.

The application will work with the Apple iPhone and the Apple iPod Touch.  Currently a Rhapsody membership costs about $14.99 per month, but the application itself will be free. Next RealNetworks will be working on a Google Android version of their application.

Spotify, a Rhapsody competitor submitted an application back in July too.  Currently Spotify is not available for download in the U.S.  The announcement was made on the Rhapsody blog.

Earlier this week U.S. Dictrict Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ruled in favor of the movie studios in a legal battle against RealNetworks.  The legal battle was over RealNetworks’ software RealDVD.  RealDVD would have allowed customers to rip and burn copies of DVDs.

This grants an injunction made against RealNetworks that prevents them from selling RealDVD.  The judge made this ruling based on a violation of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.

“We are very pleased with the court’s decision. This is a victory for the creators and producers of motion pictures and television shows and for the rule of law in our digital economy. Judge Patel’s ruling affirms what we have known all along: RealNetworks took a license to build a DVD-player and instead made an illegal DVD-copier. Throughout the development of RealDVD, RealNetworks demonstrated that it was willing to break the law at theexpense of those who create entertainment content,” stated Dan Glickman, CEO of the MPAA.

[via NYT]

About two months ago, RealNetworks made a claim that they did not anticipate a lawsuit from the MPAA.  However the MPAA has been trying to block the distribution of the company’s RealDVD software.  The litigation issue is not stopping RealNetworks from hiring engineers to work on a project calld Facet.  Facet is DVD player software that copies and stores DVDs.

RealNetworks posted a job on Craigslist earlier that requested Linux engineers to apply for the job based in Seattle.

“RealNetworks Inc., based in Seattle, WA, has recently formed a new consumer media platform team whose charter is to deliver Facet, a game-changing home entertainment system. Formed as a startup within RealNetworks, the Facet team is being led by one of the founders of RealNetworks, Phil Barrett, and has already attracted executives from Amazon.com, Microsoft, Disney and Intel, and RealNetworks. The Facet team is creating a rich set of consumer media experiences that will make the consumer electronics industry stand up and take notice,” stated the Craigslist ad.

“You will be working with innovative managers and engineers to create the next generation home entertainment platform. You will design, code, debug, and optimize your software to run on a variety of CPU architectures and graphic subsystems. Your software products will be embedded into large-volume consumer electronic devices. Therefore code quality, robustness, and performance are critical.”

The lawsuit between the MPAA and RealNetworks will continue on May 21.  Both parties will make their closing arguments.

[via CNET]