RealNetworks (NASDAQ: RNWK) has released a news multimedia player that could give the likes of Viacom (NYSE: VIA), CBS (NYSE: CBS) and other large media companies fits.
Real has been producing software players for PCs and cell phones for over a decade. But, the new player will allow consumers to take video from all major formats including Flash, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) Quicktime, and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Windows Media and store them on the PC hard-drive. The player will also allow users to rip video from sites like YouTube, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO).
Acccording to TechCrunch: "Every content creator will now be challenged by the real possibility that if their product is DRM free, it's likely to be ripped from the original source site and even burned to CD." And Barron's writes: "Once you capture the video, the software provides an easy way to send links to the content to other people."
So video pirates and video sharing buffs have YouTube in a bottle. Video can be captured on a PC hard-drive and sent to as many other computers as the user would like. Hard to trace. It is not as if a copy of Saturday Night Live is on the front page of YouTube. Instead, its is being hidden and sent out from a PC hidden somewhere among the other tens of millions of PCs around the world.
Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.
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