This week editorialist Sanford May explains how Real Network’s Rob Glaser may be the best cheerleader Apple’s iTunes Music Store never wanted.
War, politics, hurricanes, forget about them. I’ve been watching Rob Glaser and his Real Networks fall flat on their faces. I’ve been captivated by their maneuvering; why, you’d almost think they didn’t like Apple.
Real has earned a lot of press lately for reverse engineering Apple’s Fairplay digital music rights management system. (For those of you who’ve been in another dimension for the last year or so, Fairplay is the component of Apple’s digital music format that restricts songs purchased through the iTunes Music Store to limited use – an attempt to insure that the iTMS won’t be recast as a piracy mill.) In an almost swift response, Apple lambastes Real for their efforts and drops hints about Real perhaps getting crosswise with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. If Glaser had stopped there, he might right now be counting the ranks of his supporters in the digital hippie community. Yet Real has forged ahead with a blatantly anti-Apple Web site, an online petition, and then another online petition to replace the one loaded up with anti-Real comments. You’d think all this is due to Glaser and Real’s overwhelming drive to butt heads with the almighty Apple, but you’d be wrong.
Unbeknownst to most of you, Rob Glaser may be Apple’s biggest fan. I have it on good authority – bald-faced liars, all of them – that on the day iPod was unleashed on an innocent public, Glaser immediately scrapped Real’s plans for a digital music player all their own. The UnReal, as it was likely known, sported a massive – for the time – 40 gigabyte hard drive, 24 hours of battery life on a single charge, and incredible styling that was rumored to look like a cross between a Mini automobile dash and a classic Carver stereo amplifier. But small. Real small — no pun intended. Better yet, the software interface for the UnReal was designed by a team of Zen Buddhist monks living and working in an undisclosed hermitage somewhere in Tibet, or Schenectady. Only a few have seen the prototype, but those few may be saying, “It’s like it was psychic. Only one button on the damn thing, and UnReal just knew my every choice.” Wow. [You forgot to mention its holy, healing glow. – ed.]
But on the day Apple announced iPod, word has it that Glaser exclaimed, “I’ve seen the future, and we’re not it.” Directly he ordered up a couple of iPods, and he’s been smitten ever since.
Apple rolled out their music service and Glaser was quick to set Real on developing a competitive venture intended to make the iTunes Music Store look better than it really is. Glaser knew he had to work fast or the bloom might come off the rose, the iTMS might tank before he could jump in to help out Jobs and company. Real quickly turned their collective backs on jointly ventured Musicnet, then fussed around under the hood of their notoriously cranky media software RealPlayer, giving birth to the uniquely named RealPlayer Music Store – at Real Networks HQ the project was known as Operation Vive La Apple. Same basic pricing as Apple’s offering, but no slick iTunes interface, and no iPod support. Afraid his gambit might backfire, even briefly, Glaser didn’t allow Real to build in any support for Apple’s Mac computers. A true fanatic, Glaser would not accept responsibility for tempting avid Mac users with a less elegant solution.
Not long ago, Glaser implored Steve Jobs to open up the iPod/Fairplay DRM scheme so that other companies could come to the iPod party. Some called it begging, but remember that Glaser’s sole intent was to prove to the budding digital music market that Apple is far and away the industry leader, and all the other fledgling services just can’t make it without Apple’s support. Keeping things close to his mock-turtleneck in the usual manner, Jobs refused to disclose any plans about future licensing of the Fairplay software. On the surface, a failure, but underneath, where the Real plot gets really good, a grand success. Glaser again won the day on two counts, exalting Apple’s foray into the music biz, and cutting the legs out from under his own Real Networks Music Store by more or less admitting that without Apple’s technology Real won’t make much noise in the market.
But this guy is simply petrified that by some quirk — namely a mass exodus of consumers from good sense — Real Networks Music Store might start to gain some ground on iTMS. To forever preclude that possibility, Glaser directed his Real engineers to copycat Apple’s Fairplay system, thereby exposing his company and employees to costly litigation and, potentially, criminal prosecution under DMCA. They call the fruits of their labor Harmony, although it’s anything but. To tout the new feature, Real has temporarily slashed prices on its music, down to 49 cents a song. Remember, that’s 49 cents for a song that will play on your iPod today, but next year won’t play on new iPods, and won’t play on your existing iPod if you ever wish to upgrade the firmware in the future. This is pure genius, really. If it doesn’t all but drive iPod owners to Apple’s iTMS in a limousine, I don’t know what will.
And then there’s the Web site, Freedom of Music Choice, swiftly becoming the in place to go to vent your spleen on Real Networks. The site’s first online petition, demanding that Apple concede to Real’s Harmony clone of Fairplay, rapidly garnered over 500 comments, many of them aimed squarely at dismantling Real’s weak – intentionally weak, of course – arguments against iPod and iTMS. In another masterful jab at themselves, Real has quietly replaced the original petition with a new one that doesn’t allow comments, proving not only that they don’t know much about the digital music market, but they know even less about the Web. You can’t newspeak something on the Internet; you’ll have to acknowledge your error or a million sharp-eyed fact-checkers will pick you to pieces. I really have to hand it to Glaser. Steve Jobs may someday permit licensing Fairplay technology to competing music services, but Real’s CEO, almost assuredly a dedicated Apple worshiper, has single-handedly insured that his own company won’t be one of them.
Read – Real Propoganda Site [FreedomOfMusicChoice]
Read – Original petition [PetitionOnline]
