It wasn't long ago that RealNetworks and its kludgy Player software were the bane of computer users everywhere. But, a few legal accusations later, Real is now the apple in the eye of every fair use advocate, fighting for the right for users to make legal copies of DVDs -- so long as you make them through its RealDVD software, of course. The company is now escalating its legal battle against Hollywood big wigs, suing the six major movie studios and the DVD Copy Control Association for anticompetitive activity, asking for monetary damages due to the sales it has lost since the industry asked for that initial injunction against RealDVD. We're not entirely sure who's going to come up on top of this one, but if Kaleidescape can survive the CCA, maybe Real can too.

Let's face it -- quite a lot is resting on the outcome of this case. For months now, RealNetworks has been unable to legally sell its RealDVD movie ripping software after a court issued a temporary restraining order that remains valid until it's decided if the application violates the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act). Now, the software is finally having its day in court, and the outcome could shape the future of the DVD player (for better or worse). You see, Real has already assembled a prototype Facet device that hums along on Linux; essentially, this DVD playing machine would sell for around $300 and could store up to 70 movies internally. On the surface, this sounds entirely like a poor man's Kaleidescape, but only time will tell if The Man agrees. Cross your fingers folks, we get the feeling fair use advocates are going to need the luck.

It look like Hollywood's won the first round in court against RealNetworks' RealDVD DVD-ripping software -- Judge Maralyn Hall Patel (of Napster fame, remember her?) ruled yesterday that a temporary restraining order blocking sales of the software will stay in place indefinitely until she decides whether it violates the DMCA. The central issue is whether or not making a bit-for-bit copy of a DVD constitutes circumventing copy protection: the studios claim the encryption keys must be read off the disk under the terms of the license agreement, and RealNetworks obviously disagrees. There's a lot at play here, including the studios' argument that fair use doesn't serve as a defense to backing up DVDs, so we'll be tracking this one closely -- it's sadly clear to us that Hollywood's fight here is against consumers having flexibility with their media, since it lost the battle against actual piracy ages ago.

RealNetworks, the company you love to hate, is back with a new product sure to capture the attention of Hollywood and its MPAA thugs. For $30, RealDVD plans to do what DVD Jon enabled years ago -- namely, making digital copies of your DVDs. Unlike Jon's illegal DRM stripping software, RealNetworks' approach lays on additional DRM allowing you to make a single copy, only, playable on the machine doing the rip -- up to five additional Windows PCs can be authorized at a cost of $20 per.

Real thinks that the use of the additional DRM coupled with Kaleidescape's legal victory -- a ruling that seemingly authorizes users to copy DVDs for their own personal use -- will help it escape the wrath of the MPAA. Not that RealNetworks has ever been afraid of a fight as demonstrated by its 2004 scuffle with Apple when it began offering software that allowed iPods to play Real's DRM'd content. Good thing too because we're pretty sure that shutting down the planned start of RealDVD's sales at the end of this month is the number one topic around the bunny-juice dispensers at the MPAA offices this morning.

[Via cnet]

Though not what we'd deem "common," outages extending beyond a few hours have been known to happen to the services we love so dearly, and it seems that some Rhapsody users have become the latest to fall victim to an inexplicable lapse in service. Over at the Real forums, a number of customers have been unable to sign into their accounts for up to two days, and no amount of chicanery has solved the quandary. To make matters even more frightening, many are getting a message that their account simply is nowhere to be found, and customer service doesn't seem to be getting anyone very far. Also curious is the fact that new accounts (as in, ones created while current customers are unable to login) seem to be working just fine, but we here haven't personally experienced any of the login difficulties. What gives? Any of you out there pulling your hair out over this? Got a secret for getting logged in that you'd like to share?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Update: This in from Real: "Our engineer and support staff became aware of a login issue affecting a small number of users yesterday. They're hard at work to fix the problem for the folks being affected." No ETA for the fix though, and it definitely sounds like more than just a few users, but your mileage may vary.

Around a hundred employees at RealNetworks are dealing with the news that their job is no longer available, and about 35 of those positions were in Seattle, Washington while the others were in Asia / Europe. According to company spokesman Bill Hankes, the firm made cuts "across the board to reduce redundancies built up as a result of six acquisitions made over the past two years," and he also added that these were the "first layoffs the company has made since those purchases." As it stands, around 1,700 employees are left, and no further job cuts are "planned."

[Via PaidContent]

Yep, TiVo is re-announcing support for Rhapsody today, finally ready to roll out to Real / TiVo crossover customers. Real's hardware integration list, which includes iRiver, Nokia, SanDisk, Sonos, etc., gets finally getting another notch in the bedpost, and you get to thumbs up / down your music selections (thanks, TiVo peanut) couchside. It doesn't sound like you can do much more than stream tracks and Rhapsody radio from the cloud, though, so if you're expecting some crazy TiVo-centered device syncing or portable media integration, think again. And say, while we're on the topic of TiVo updates, not that we want to look a service-supporting gift horse in the mouth or anything, but we're still waiting for TiVoToGo and TiVoToComeBack for our Series3s and HDs, y'hear TiVo?

We got a few minutes to chat (once again) with Real's Rob Glaser today, who was kind enough to answer a few lingering questions about Real's freshly announced music alliance with MTV and Verizon called Rhapsody America.

• On Urge and integrating with Rhapsody, "The Urge brand will be retired... but we wanted to be welcoming and loving to existing Urge subscribers" who are now making the migration to Rhapsody.
• On Rhapsody and MTV's strange bedfellows partnership: "Philosophically we have very similar views...", Real intends to leverage "MTV's expertise in genres and content curation", but technologically Real's Rhapsody platform will continue to be what the venture builds off.
  
• For example, one unannounced iteration of that integration would be with "MTV's Top 20 video countdown -- you'll be able to see the countdown and get music directly in Rhapsody."
• On PlaysForSure: "PFS is a legacy system that Microsoft abandoned when they went to Zune." With the Clix2 Rhapsody, Real and iRiver "picked up the mantle of innovation that MS chose to abandon."
• Will real continue to support PFS? "Yes, as long as there is a high volume of devices and we can extend them, we see no reason to stop supporting the legacy architecture."
• On DRM-free music sales: "We think in the long term DRM-free music delivers the best consumer experience, solves the interoperability problem, and better connects with consumers psychologically." Damn skippy.

Cross-marketing is great and all, but we'd rather know how we factor into this new partnership between MTV, Real and Verizon Wireless. Turns out a few things will be changing from the get go. For one, Urge customers can dive into Rhapsody starting today, using their existing login info to get their feet wet in the #1 subscription service. Rhapsody users will also be enjoying a bit of MTV, VH1 and CMT content, but it's not perfectly clear what or when they'll be getting it. Real also confirmed that it'll be keeping its current partnerships with the likes of Best Buy, SanDisk and TiVo. For Verizon's part of the action, they'll be giving you Rhapsody versions of your over-the-air purchases in a few months. Otherwise, the future is unclear. According to the press release, Rhapsody is "the exclusive digital music service for Real and for MTV Networks' premier music and pop culture brands in the United States." That said, MTV hasn't really said anything too solid on its exit from Microsoft cahoots with its current Urge offering, so we'll just have to wait and see how this all pans out.

Rhapsody America (the new Real / MTV partnership) wasn't the only thing that Real had up its sleeve today. Hot on the heels of the Universal snubbing of iTunes, and consequent announcement that the company would begin selling music via other outlets, comes today's news that the Rhapsody / Universal Music partnership has officially launched, at least in a limited "test" form, with the aim of selling UMG's catalog of thousands of tracks -- sans DRM -- via the Real Rhapsody service, charging $.89 per song for subscribers and $.99 for non-subscribers. Currently, only a select group of artists are up for grabs, including 50 Cent, Amy Winehouse, The Pussycat Dolls, The Police and Johnny Cash, though the plan is to make Universal's entire catalog available in the future. This announcement makes what we all knew was coming now abundantly clear -- the gloves have come off.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Wal-mart's welcome entry into DRM-free MP3 sales isn't the only thing going on in the online music space this morning. Apparently MTV and Real have decided to team up against Apple's juggernaut, and will be announcing a merged online store at 11AM ET today. They've even got Verizon and Vodafone signed up for mobile distribution, says the Journal. At this point it's still unclear how this will impact MTV's Urge partnership with Microsoft, and Real's Rhapsody service, but we just hope they're aware of the fact that things are basically looking DRM-free or bust at the moment, 'cause the market really doesn't need too many more also-rans.

Update: We're tuning into the press conference call as we speak, so standby for updates.

• MTV, Real and Verizon are launching a new integrated music service.
• MTV and Real are spinning off a new company called Rhapsody America, partnering with Verizon Wireless. V CAST as mobile platform.
• Rhapsody America will by run by Urge's Michael Bloom. Kicking off marketing at MTV Video Music awards September 9th.
• Verizon promises 8GB of phone music storage this year, and 16GB in 2008. Most likely refers to removable storage via (micro)SDHC, since they mentioned a current 4GB cap, and don't offer any 4GB phones.
  
• Not just songs, the service will also include ringtones, album covers, ringback tones and music videos.
• Urge is sticking around on Windows Media Player 11 until further notice, they're currently in talks with Microsoft.
• Over-the-air downloads likely to be "important part of the service going forward." Emphasis is on being able to access your music collection wherever.
• All of Real's DRM-free efforts (including the Universal DRM-free trial launch today) will be included in Rhapsody America. They think 2008 is when DRM-free will start to go mainstream.
• Will most likely support subscription and purchase models.
• No word on price or when the service is going to be available.

It always warms our hearts to see some solid device / service integration on the non-Apple side of things, and now iriver and Real are getting all cozy with the new clix Rhapsody player. Based on the gen 2 clix PMP, the player includes Rhapsody-specific functions such as album art and editorial reviews, along with features to let you to rate songs on the device and discover new music via personalized channels that get loaded each time you hook up to the service -- similar to what can be found on the Sansa Rhapsody. The player costs $190 for 4GB of storage and is available now online, but the best news is a firmware upgrade available at iriver's site that brings all these functions to your current second-gen clix for free.

Here's a new one on us. Instead of suing companies for infringing on its patents, like all the cool kids are doing, Media Rights Technologies has sent cease and desist letters to Apple, Microsoft, RealNetworks and Adobe for "actively avoiding" the use of its technology. According to MRT, the DMCA's language on copyright protection circumvention -- defined as "to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner." -- requires those companies to use its product, since its X1 SeCure Recording Control technology has been proven to plug the "digital hole," and therefore allows them to uphold the DMCA. "We've given these four companies 10 days to talk to us and work out a solution, or we will go into federal court and file action and seek an injunction to remove the infringing products from the marketplace," says CEO Hank Risan. RealNetworks spokesman Matt Graves calls the letters "a rather novel approach to business development," and lawyers are calling the effort "out there" and "a play for publicity." We call it a riot, and while it's not likely to go far -- not even the far-reaching and vaguely worded DMCA is likely to hold this one up for long -- we're at least grateful to MRT for mixing things up a bit in the boring old tech lawsuit game.

This rumor is just about as old as iTunes itself, and while it has remained fairly dormant due to Steve's insistence on maintaining the oh-so-lucrative existing model, the subscription-based iTunes question has somehow surfaced again. According to Les Ottolenghi, CEO of INTENT MediaWorks, Apple could be leaning towards implementing such a service "within the next six months," and even went so far as to suggest we not believe any Apple-based denials that could potentially follow. Interestingly, several analysts even suggested that subscription-based systems haven't garnered much fanfare simply because the head honcho in digital music distribution isn't playing along. Unfortunately, no hints were dropped in regard to future pricing schemes, but you'll only be waiting about half a year to find out, anyway.

[Via Digg]

Those RealNetworks folks are all about sharing these days, with Sonos, Sansa, iriver and now TiVo integration for their Rhapsody music service. TiVo seems like a pretty natural fit, and it sounds like TiVo and Real are doing it right, allowing access to the entire Rhapsody catalog from any broadband connected TiVo in the home. The functionality is based on Real's Rhapsody DNA API, allowing the TiVo to stream songs and flag tracks for playback on the PC. You can also access your PC music library from the TiVo box, but don't get too excited: Rhapsody and TiVo won't be rolling this stuff out until "later this year."