Bombshell from RealNetworks: Rip/Save/Burn "All"
Just a few minutes ago at the "D" conference in Carlsbad, California, RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser made a bombshell announcement about a new product from RealNetworks.
Context & Ripple Effects
Rob Glaser used the D conference stage to announce a RealPlayer built around Rip/Save/Burn, and the trade press converged on what that actually means: as CNET, Scobleizer, NewTeeVee and ScobleShow all framed it within hours, the new player takes YouTube and other Flash videos offline — converting a playback client into a capture tool.
The move fits RealNetworks' established playbook of fighting for desktop real estate rather than catalog alone: in January 2006 the company confirmed a deal making Rhapsody, not Apple's iTunes, the default music playing and buying software on HP's US consumer PCs.
First-order effects
- RealPlayer gains one-click saving of Flash video from YouTube and comparable sites, giving its installed base a reason to reopen a client that browsers had been marginalizing.
- Glaser makes the player itself the headline rather than any store or subscription, extending the defaults-first strategy behind the 2006 Rhapsody-on-HP deal.
Second-order effects
- Sites built on in-browser Flash playback — YouTube chief among them — face off-platform copies of streams intended to be ephemeral, forcing content owners to decide whether to block, tolerate, or monetize saved files.
- Apple and other desktop media-software vendors are handed a competitive frame where the differentiator is capture and portability of web video, not purchases from a walled store.
Third-order effects
- If saving streamed video becomes routine consumer behavior, the dispute migrates from technical capability to licensing terms — whether a downloaded copy of an ad-supported stream counts as infringement or a product tier.
- Desktop media players re-emerge as chokepoints between web video services and viewers, challenging the browser-centric assumption underlying the 2007 online-video boom.
The trend: Consumer media software is collapsing the boundary between streaming and owning, with desktop players recast as capture tools for web video.