Real Networks boss accuses iPod owners of music theft

RTV71 used our news submit to tell us about a comment from the upper echelon of the once mighty Real Networks organization. Apparently business is not slow enough, so he went public in this interview at the Guardian calling the holders of the most popular portable music device, the Apple iPod, thieves and/or criminals.

In an interview with The Guardian, the chief executive of Real Networks, Rob Glaser, voiced a concern on how Ipod users are getting their hands on music. "About half the music on Ipods is music obtained illegitimately either from an illegal peer-to-peer networks or from ripping friends" CDs, which is illegal," he said. The inference is, of course, that Ipod owners are, for the most part, stealing their music. "The average number of songs sold for the iPod is 25," he said. However he was taking more of a shot at Apple than at Ipod users, saying that stealing music is "the only way to get non-copy protected, portable, interoperable music," slamming the proprietary nature of Apple's Ipod and Itunes system.

Wow! Talk about your sour grapes. Apple DRM is proprietary, but any music sold online is ladled a healthy dose of DRM of some sort to "protect intellectual rights", even Real's offerings. You either saddle it with controls, or you don't get the music from the labels, simple as that. Possibly he wants a peice of the action that Apple has going, but this is not the best way to go about it.

It's anyones guess what the stats are for illegal files on iPods, who knows if it is 50% or not? But, we do know from market studies, that Apple now controls 52% of the portable player market and this guy probably insulted a good portion of them.

Source: TGDaily