RealNetworks Sues Microsoft For Antitrust Violations
from the haven't-we-done-this-before? dept
Try, try again. It seems that even if Microsoft can shake the government's antitrust pursuit, they're still getting hit from other angles. The latest is that RealNetworks has filed an antitrust suit against Microsoft, claiming that they're using their operating system monopoly to limit choice on digital media. They're going to ask for somewhere around $1 billion dollars. Microsoft has done an amazing job shaking off every such lawsuit in the past. You wonder if, one day, one of these will stick.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
No Subject Given
It allows you, the user, or the OEM to turn off or at least hide Windows Media Player.
If Real Networks did some workstation maintenance, they'd already no this.
I'm so p!ssed off with Real Player and how it high-jacks your system that I haven't installed it for years, even though I bought a license for the full player at one point. I'm guessing I'm not the only one who's grown to hate this 'product' and RN is just trying to get 'revenue' the only way left - litigation.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: No Subject Given
There was an update to it that added a lot of functionality, fixed some bugs, corrrected a security 'mistake' and a few other things.
When I got my new PC and installed Real Jukebox Plus I got a dialog telling me that a newer version was available for download and so I downloaded the new version - except it wasn't a new version of the software I had bought and paid for, it was a 30 day free trial for their subscription service. I was no longer able to get the update for the version that I had paid for so I had to deal with all problems with the original version... at least until iTunes was available for Windows - now all is well again.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
RealNetworks sues Microsoft
Real Notworks should pay attention to the public, and maybe they would do better.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Microsoft getting sued
defending themselves in court, I seem to recall
that Caldera got some kind of settlement for the
whole DR-DOS thing, which was sealed. No one knows the exact dollar value attached to
the settlement, but it is rumoured to be somewhere
in the 10s to small numbers of 100s of millions
of dollars. Same group seems to be trying to
do a similiar thing with SCO and the linux code
right now, with far less successful results it
appears.
Further, there was a company/product called
'stacker' for run time disk compression
(back when hard drive space was considerably
more expensive than now) Microsoft copied
the product, or at least it's functionality,
into some version of DOS, and then promptly
got whacked for copying the product. Seems
to me Microsoft settled for some
'all stock buyout' of Stacker.
Long story to short - Microsoft has lost in
court, multiple times, for similiar behaviour
in the past.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Microsoft getting sued
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Read the complaint...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No Subject Given
Does anyone think the government is going to 'cut M$' off at the knee when their products run their infrastructure ??? If M$ took their toys and went home, the US govt would be in turmoil for a lonnnggggggggg time.
Hello ? ? ? Was that open source I heard ?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
real vs m$
[ link to this | view in chronology ]