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A Year Ago: Brits tick off RealNetworks

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) will fire off a missive to RealNetworks for failing to alert users on copyright issues with its CD Streamer product -- a product it markets for US software company, Super Planet.CD Streamer lets users store audio CDs in "CD-quality RealAudio" format store 30 hours of CD-quality music per gigabyte, which, according to Jollyon Benn, operations executive for counterfeit issues at the BPI, is not dissimilar to MP3 -- a major irritation for the music industry.
Written by Richard Barry, Contributor

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) will fire off a missive to RealNetworks for failing to alert users on copyright issues with its CD Streamer product -- a product it markets for US software company, Super Planet.

CD Streamer lets users store audio CDs in "CD-quality RealAudio" format store 30 hours of CD-quality music per gigabyte, which, according to Jollyon Benn, operations executive for counterfeit issues at the BPI, is not dissimilar to MP3 -- a major irritation for the music industry. "I'm amazed and concerned that RealNetworks hasn't put any warnings [about copyright] on the marketing material."

But RealNetworks European marketing director Francois Mazoudier refutes the BPI's criticism: "CD Streamer is not actually one of our products it is just sold through our online store. We have nothing to say in terms of copyright because it's not our product but of course we are conscious of any product that may infringe copyright and there are various notices on our site alerting users to that fact."

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