RealNetworks uses Gracenote’s music recognition and identification technology to power Rinse. The Gracenote Global Media Database has about 8 million albums and 100 million tracks. You can download Rinse for $39 from http://www.rinsemymusic.com.

Thomas Slattery filed a class-action lawsuit against Apple in 2005 saying that the company illegally limited consumer choice by making the iPod work with iTunes exclusively. The software that the iPods ran on was called FairPlay. FairPlay encodes digital music files to only allow downloads from iTunes to be played on the iPod and not use products from other manufacturers. FairPlay also prevented music sold by other companies to work on iPods.

On July 24, 2004, RealNetworks announced software called Harmony that would sell music, which would work on the iPod. Apple updated their FairPlay software to prevent Harmony from working with the iPod.

This case was filed under Apple iPod, iTunes Antitrust Litigation, C05- 0037JW, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Jose).

[Bloomberg]

BackStage Technologies is well known for creating the Family Feud application game on Facebook. RealNetworks’ GameHouse division applications work with about 60 million active users per month. The company will continue to operate in Victoria, B.C. Canada.

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]

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.

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.

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]

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]

Yesterday RealNetworks made the surprise claim because under the rules of evidence, a company must retain records if they have knowledge of a potential upcoming lawsuit.  The MPAA has reason to believe that RealNetworks destroyed documents that relate to the production of the RealDVD software.  The MPAA believes that RealNetworks did this well before they sued the software company in September.

“We didn’t think litigation was probable,” stated Leo Cunningham, one of RealNetworks’ attorney.  Cunningham reported this to U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel during a hearing.  The MPAA generally sues all companies that they believe is a threat to DVD sales.

The MPAA alleges that RealNetworks trashed a senior project manager’s “engineering notebooks” and “actual code files.”  Cunningham stated that the disapperance of the notebooks are a mystery.

Bart Williams, an attorney for the MPAA stated that it was obvious that the MPAA wuld sue RealNetworks.  RealNetworks should have expected it from the time of the product’s initial development two years ago.

Within a few days of the RealDVD software hitting the market, about 3,000 copies were sold.  Judge Patel blocked further distribution in October until an outcome was decided.  MPAA believes that RealNetworks is directly violating the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.

RealNetworks said that they are not violating the DMCA because they allow users to store copies of their own movies on their hard drives which is fair use.  One of the biggest disputes in the case is whether a DVD should be playable without the need for the actual disc with built-in encryption code.

[via Wired]

These studios believe that many of Netflix and Blockbuster’s customers would just burn the movies that they rent with the RealDVD software, thus causing them to lose out on a great deal of money.  The lawsuit was filed at the U.S. District Court in L.A. 

“The incentive for the consumer is obvious and all but overwhelming,” stated a request by the movie studios.  The request was for a temporary restraining order. “‘Why,’ he or she may ask, ‘should I pay $18.50 to purchase a DVD when I can rent it for $3.25 and make a permanent copy?’”

RealNetworks defends their software by saying it is legal.  RealDVD is sold for $30 per consumer at $20 for up to four licenses after that.  The software copy is locked into the original owner’s hard drive and does not alter the encryption technology used by movie studios already.  Copying one’s own personal copies of a DVD is “fair use” by law. 

The movie studios stated that RealDVD violates the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to bypass technologies that prevent the copying of a DVD without permission of the copyright owners.  The movie studios that are suing RealNetworks includes Viacom, Inc. (NYSE:VIA)’s Paramount Pictures, Sony Corporation (NYSE:SNE)’s Sony Pictures, News Corporation (NYSE:NWS.A)’s 20th Century Fox, General Electric (NYSE:GE)’s Universal, The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS) studio, and Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX) Warner Bros.