#RealNetworks

[rehanavirani]

From Classmates to Co-op: The Networking That Actually Worked

The Co-op Search: Where Networking and Hard Work Collided

When I first started my co-op search, I heard two conflicting messages:

"It's all about who you know!"

"Just apply online and hope for the best!"

Here's what actually happened: I got my co-op through my college job portal... but my networking efforts made all the difference in getting me ready.

The Winning Combination: Job Portal + Strategic Networking

1. The College Portal Was My Foundation

✅ Applied to 15+ positions through our school's job board ✅ Received 3 interview invites (including my eventual co-op) ✅ No "magic connections" needed for the initial opportunity

But here's what no one tells you: Getting the interview was just step one.

2. How Networking Actually Helped (Behind the Scenes)

While I didn't need a referral to get the interview, my networking efforts gave me crucial advantages:

From Seniors & Classmates: ✔ Resume feedback that made my application stand out ✔ Insider info about the company culture and interview process ✔ Mock interviews that boosted my confidence

From Guest Speakers & Events: ✔ Learned what skills employers really value ✔ Gained industry-specific knowledge I could reference ✔ Developed more professional communication skills

From LinkedIn Connections: ✔ Discovered what similar roles actually entailed ✔ Got tips on answering behavioral questions ✔ Understood current industry trends to discuss

The Reality Check: What Networking Did and Didn't Do

✅ What Networking Provided:

Preparation advantages

Industry insights

Skill development

Moral support

❌ What Networking Didn't Do:

Directly get me the job

Replace strong applications

Guarantee any opportunities

The Hybrid Approach That Worked For Me

Cast a Wide Net (Applied to many positions)

Prepare Like a Pro (Used network for insights)

Let Merit Shine (Performed well in interviews)

Key Lesson: Networking didn't hand me the co-op, but it absolutely helped me earn it.

My Best Networking Tips (That Actually Work)

Start with Your Inner Circle - Peers and seniors give the most actionable help

Quality Over Quantity - 5 meaningful conversations > 50 cold messages

Give to Get - Help others and they'll help you

Network for Knowledge - Not just for job leads

Combine Strategies - Apply online AND leverage connections

Final Thoughts: Two Wings to Fly

Getting my co-op was like a bird needing two wings: 🪽 Left Wing: The job portal (opportunity) 🪽 Right Wing: My network (preparation)

I needed both to take flight.

To anyone searching now: Don't stress about collecting business cards. Focus on building real relationships and putting in strong applications. The right opportunity will come.

[realnetworknl]

RealNetwork is een toonaangevende ICT-partner en -consultant die systeem- en netwerkbeheer levert voor het midden- en kleinbedrijf (mkb) in het bruisende Rotterdam. Met meer dan twintig jaar ervaring zijn wij in staat je IT-systemen soepel te laten functioneren en IT-infrastructuur te optimaliseren, zodat je nog efficiënter en effectiever kunt werken.

Bij RealNetwork begrijpen we dat technologie van cruciaal belang is voor het succes van moderne bedrijven. Ons toegewijde team van ervaren professionals beschikt over de nodige expertise en kennis van IT-beheer – van systeeminstallatie en -configuratie tot netwerkonderhoud, probleemoplossing en cybersecurity. Daarmee garanderen we een veilige en betrouwbare IT-infrastructuur die jouw bedrijf in staat stelt zijn doelen te bereiken, zonder onderbrekingen of technische obstakels.

Wij bieden efficiënte, betrouwbare en betaalbare IT-ondersteuning, zodat jij je kunt richten op wat het belangrijkst is: de groei van je bedrijf. Ons uitgebreide aanbod van managed IT-diensten in Rotterdam omvat projectplanning, clouddiensten, telefonie en VoIP, camerabeveiliging, ICT-werkplekbeheer, helpdeskondersteuning, proactief onderhoud, cybersecurity, gegevensback-up, virtuele CIO-diensten, Microsoft 365, gegevensanalyse en nog veel meer! Neem nu contact met ons op voor IT-ondersteuning in Rotterdam!

Website: https://www.realnetwork.nl

Address: Francis Picabiastraat 32, 3059 RP Rotterdam

Phone Number: +31 10 285 0885

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

#20yrsago Kalashnikov: US gov’t is pirating my AK-47 design https://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/26/world/who-s-a-pirate-russia-points-back-at-the-us.html

#20yrsago Real ships guerrilla DRM for the iPod https://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/26/business/media-realnetworks-plans-to-sell-songs-to-be-played-on-ipod.html

#20yrsago 30,000 anti-Induce Act letters sent to Congress https://web.archive.org/web/20040723084653/https://action.eff.org/action/index.asp?step=2&item=2918

#10yrsago Journalist believes his phone was hacked by spooks at HOPE X, will upload image for forensics https://thecryptosphere.com/2014/07/23/report-from-hope-x-surveillance-snowden-stratfor-and-surprises/

#10yrsago What’s original? Cloning games versus making games https://www.raphkoster.com/2014/07/23/when-is-a-clone/

#10yrsago Great video explainer: Vint Cerf on ICANN and NTIA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd3dH90tdhk

#5yrsago Trade war: Hasbro is shifting manufacturing to Vietnam and India, drawing down production in China https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-24/world-s-top-toymaker-joins-companies-leaving-china-s-factories

#5yrsago #Rickyrenuncia: Bowing to popular pressure, Puerto Rican governor Ricardo Rossello has resigned https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-24/puerto-rico-lawmakers-push-to-impeach-crisis-beset-governor

#5yrsago #29leaks: someone leaked 15 years’ worth of data from London’s most notorious shell-company factory https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/24/this-london-firm-helps-the-wealthy-hide-assets-or-steal-them-luckily-we-have-15-years-of-their-client-communications/

#5yrsago E-scooter companies are desperate for repo men to stop impounding their vehicles https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/24/20696405/dockless-scooters-share-repo-men-repossessor-lawsuit-tow-yard-lime-bird-lyft-uber-razor

#5yrsago Adblocking: How about nah? https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

#5yrsago Countries with higher levels of unionization have lower per-capita carbon footprints https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331445998_Is_Labor_Green

#5yrsago Analyzing 800 daily tweets that say “Today was the day that Donald Trump became president” https://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/1154098035183329280

[weirdstuffontemu]

Not particularly weird, sure, but notice that the brand/logo on the lid is from RealNetworks, a company which was really popular for their streaming media service in the mid-1990s to early 2000s.

[swizzlevixen]

I used to work a few blocks down the street from RealNetworks (yes, RealPlayer, RealAudio, et al.), as recently as 2020. Sometimes I would take lunchtime walks past their office, and feel compelled to shout, “how do you still exist?!” but alas, no one ever answered.

[nxlvb4]

RealNetworks: A Comprehensive Analysis of Its Evolution and Impact

RealNetworks, Inc., based in Seattle, Washington, has been a pivotal player in the development and delivery of streaming media since its inception in 1994. Originally founded as Progressive Networks, the company has undergone significant transformations, faced competitive challenges, and made strategic acquisitions and innovations that have shaped the digital media landscape. This article delves…

[fragassoadvisorspittsburgh]

RealNetwork

RealNetwork is een toonaangevende ICT-partner en -consultant die systeem- en netwerkbeheer levert voor het midden- en kleinbedrijf (mkb) in het bruisende Rotterdam. Met meer dan twintig jaar ervaring zijn wij in staat je IT-systemen soepel te laten functioneren en IT-infrastructuur te optimaliseren, zodat je nog efficiënter en effectiever kunt werken.

Bij RealNetwork begrijpen we dat technologie van cruciaal belang is voor het succes van moderne bedrijven. Ons toegewijde team van ervaren professionals beschikt over de nodige expertise en kennis van IT-beheer – van systeeminstallatie en -configuratie tot netwerkonderhoud, probleemoplossing en cybersecurity. Daarmee garanderen we een veilige en betrouwbare IT-infrastructuur die jouw bedrijf in staat stelt zijn doelen te bereiken, zonder onderbrekingen of technische obstakels.

Wij bieden efficiënte, betrouwbare en betaalbare IT-ondersteuning, zodat jij je kunt richten op wat het belangrijkst is: de groei van je bedrijf. Ons uitgebreide aanbod van managed IT-diensten in Rotterdam omvat projectplanning, clouddiensten, telefonie en VoIP, camerabeveiliging, ICT-werkplekbeheer, helpdeskondersteuning, proactief onderhoud, cybersecurity, gegevensback-up, virtuele CIO-diensten, Microsoft 365, gegevensanalyse en nog veel meer! Neem nu contact met ons op voor IT-ondersteuning in Rotterdam!

For more at IT ondersteuning & MAP

Address: Francis Picabiastraat 32, 3059 RP Rotterdam, Netherlands

Phone: +31 10 285 0885 

Email: info@realnetwork.nl

[majoorgeksoft]

Realplayer

From RealNetworks Inc download “Realplayer”. Popular software for Windows. Download the application file on a Windows PC/laptop (32bit or 64bit), in the Download Tab that has been provided by MajoorGeksoft… Program Benefits And Download Realplayer RealPlayer transcends mere video playback software, offering a comprehensive suite developed by RealNetworks to manage audio, video, and image…

[newsonnews]

RealNetworks Offloads Rhapsody, Napster to MelodyVR Group

RealNetworks Offloads Rhapsody, Napster to MelodyVR Group... #RealNetworks has completed the disposal of #Rhapsody International, otherwise known as #Napster, to #MelodyVR Group.

RealNetworks has completed the disposal of Rhapsody International, otherwise known as Napster, to MelodyVR Group. Continue reading

[ajayuikey]

UK immersive music startup MelodyVR acquires Napster from RealNetworks for $70M – TechCrunch Napster, the pioneering digital music brand from way back when, is changing hands once more. Today, a UK startup called…

[robpegoraro]

Weekly output: spotting fakes in e-mails and text messages Spending most of this week knocked out by a cold had the predictable effects on my productivity, but at least my schedule was clear.

[freenewstoday]

New Post has been published on https://freenews.today/2021/03/23/amazon-hires-former-executive-adam-selipsky-to-run-aws/

Amazon hires former executive Adam Selipsky to run AWS

Amazon has chosen to Adam Selipsky, currently CEO of Salesforce-owned data-visualization software maker Tableau, to run its Amazon Web Services division. Andy Jassy, the current head of AWS and the person chosen to replace Jeff Bezos as the head of all of Amazon, informed employees in an email on Tuesday.

Amazon rules the market for public cloud infrastructure that companies use to run internal and external applications, a modern alternative to relying on in-house servers, storage and networking equipment. In 2019 industry research company Gartner estimated that Amazon had 45% of the market, more than any other company, including Microsoft and Google. As such, Selipsky becomes the most visible person in the growing category, perhaps second only to Jassy, who enters a bigger job when he becomes Amazon CEO in the third quarter.

Selipsky is one of the people several insiders had identified as a possible successor to Jassy. The two men have an excellent relationship, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC. Selipsky had held a prominent position inside AWS, as vice president for sales, marketing and support, before leaving to run then-public Tableau in 2016. Salesforce bought Tableau for $15.7 billion in 2019.

The role Selipsky left at Amazon was vacant for years. Last year AWS chose executive Matt Garman, who had worked on AWS’ core EC2 virtual-computing service, to take over the position.

Selipsky was viewed as a rising star within Salesforce after the Tableau acquisition. At an event hosted by Goldman Sachs in January, the bank’s CEO David Solomon asked Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff to name something that investors aren’t fully appreciating about his company. As part of his answer, Benioff listed a few top executives.

We “have so many other CEOs in our midst like Adam Selipsky, the CEO of Tableau,” Benioff said. “Soon, we’ll have Stewart, CEO of Slack,” he added, referring to Stewart Butterfield.

Salesforce CFO Mark Hawkins responded to a question about the Tableau integration in December. He said: “It’s a best-in-class, unique asset in the world. Great leadership team, great CEO with Adam Selipsky and the management team.”

Selipsky has remained president and CEO of Tableau since the acquisition. Mark Nelson, who joined Tableau as an executive vice president of product development in 2018 from SAP-owned expense-management service Concur, where he had been technology chief, will become the new head of Tableau, a Salesforce spokesperson told CNBC in an email. Nelson starts in the new job immediately, according to a person close to Salesforce, while Selipsky will return to Amazon on May 17, Jassy wrote in the memo.

Selipsky joined Amazon in 2005, a year before the company introduced EC2 and the S3 storage service, and stayed for 11 years. Before that he had been a vice president at RealNetworks.

A copy of the memo follows. Amazon later confirmed the move in a blog post.

I want to share that Adam Selipsky will be the next CEO of AWS.

Adam is not a new face to AWS. Back in 2005, Adam was one of the first VPs we hired in AWS, and ran AWS’s Sales, Marketing, and Support for 11 years (as well as some other areas like our AWS Platform services for a spell). Adam then became the CEO of Tableau in 2016, and ran Tableau for the last 4.5 years. Tableau experienced significant success during Adam’s time as CEO– the value of the company quadrupled in just a few years, Tableau transitioned through a fundamental business model change from perpetual licenses to subscription licensing, and the company was eventually acquired by Salesforce in 2019 in one of the largest software acquisitions in history. Following the acquisition, Adam remained the CEO of Tableau and was a member of Salesforce’s Executive Leadership Team.

Adam brings strong judgment, customer obsession, team building, demand generation, and CEO experience to an already very strong AWS leadership team. And, having been in such a senior role at AWS for 11 years, he knows our culture and business well. 

With a $51B revenue run rate that’s growing 28% YoY (these were the Q4 2020 numbers we last publicly shared), it’s easy to forget that AWS is still in the very early stages of what’s possible. Less than 5% of the global IT spend is in the cloud at this point. That’s going to substantially change in the coming years. We have a lot more to invent for customers, and we have a very strong leadership team and group of builders to go make it happen. Am excited for what lies ahead.

Andy

 P.S. Adam will return to AWS on May 17. We will spend the subsequent several weeks transitioning together before making the change sometime in Q3.

— CNBC’s Ari Levy contributed to this report.

Source

[chloefashionthroughtime]

MTV

MTV, or Music Television, is a cable television network that originated as a 24-hour music video platform. MTV made its premiere just after midnight on August 1, 1981, with the Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star" broadcast. Video disc jockeys (or "veejays") introduced videos and spoke about music news between clips, similar to Top 40 radio.Following a strong start, the network suffered in its early years. The reservoir of music videos was fairly shallow at the time, resulting in frequent recurrence of clips, while cable television remained a luxury that had yet to find a market. MTV's popularity skyrocketed once it extended its programming to include rhythm and blues musicians. Singles from Michael Jackson's Thriller (1982), such as "Billie Jean" and "Beat It," not only demonstrated the virtues of the music video genre, but also demonstrated that exposure on MTV could catapult musicians to superstardom. The network helped newcomers like Madonna and new wave legends Duran Duran achieve popularity by using more complex tactics to make the visual parts of the video as essential as the music. MTV also resurrected older musicians such as ZZ Top, Tina Turner, and Peter Gabriel, who each had their best successes of their careers as a result of strong rotation of their videos. MTV had had a notable impact on motion films, advertisements, and television by the mid-1980s. It additionally had an impact on the music industry; appearing nice (or at least intriguing) on MTV became as crucial as sounding good when it came to selling records.

When Viacom Inc. bought MTV Networks, the parent company of MTV, from Warner Communications Inc. in 1985, the programming change was drastic and quick. Instead of a veejay's full shift being covered by a free-form mix of music, videos were packed into separate blocks depending on genre. Specialty series such as 120 Minutes (alternative music), Headbangers Ball (heavy metal), and Yo! MTV Raps arose as a result (hip-hop). Soon, game programmes, reality series, animated cartoons, and soap operas joined the MTV schedule, and the network's focus changed from music to youth-oriented pop culture. By the mid-1990s, the bulk of MTV's daily schedule was devoted to non-music programming. VH1 has been showing adult-oriented rock videos since 1985, and it quickly filled the void with original programming such as Pop Up Video and the documentary series Behind the Music. MTV Networks created MTV2 in 1996 with the purpose of recapturing the enthusiasm symbolised by their 1980s "I Want My MTV" advertising campaign. MTV2 began with the same free-form framework as early MTV, but quickly moved to genre-specific programming. By 2005, MTV2 had taken the same path as its parent network, with the majority of its programming consisting of reality shows, celebrity news, and comedy. While music had a diminished prominence on MTV, visuals remained vital to the network's brand. MTV began honouring accomplishment in the medium with its annual Video Music Awards in 1984. Total Request Live (TRL), an hour-long interview and music video show that anchored the daily lineup, started in 1998. By the early twenty-first century, however, MTV was rapidly attempting to market itself as an Internet music destination.Its website included streaming video and music material, and in 2007, it launched Rhapsody America, a joint venture with RealNetworks and Verizon Wireless, as a subscription-based competitor to Apple Inc.'s enormously popular iTunes service; in 2010, it was split out as Rhapsody International. TRL was terminated in 2008, in part due to the popularity of watching music videos on the Internet, but it reappeared in 2017. When the Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star" appeared on MTV (Music TeleVision) in the summer of 1981, it only slightly overestimated the influence that the cable television network would have on music and popular culture. MTV, which broadcasted 24-hour music videos interrupted by "music news" and hosted by peppy "veejays," was accused of everything from decreasing viewers' attention spans to racism and discrimination.

Nonetheless, its quick speed and the increasingly complex techniques used in the music videos it transmitted had a considerable impact on film, television, and ads. It also had an impact on the music industry; appearing nice (or at least intriguing) on MTV became as crucial as sounding good when it came to selling records. Artists like Madonna and Michael Jackson rose to fame as a result of their use of the media. Jackson's Thriller (1982) videos were dance-oriented minimusicals that not only helped the album become a millions seller, but also expanded MTV programming to include black artists. MTV was instrumental in selling hip-hop to a primarily white suburban audience at the time. The network's programming has also expanded to include youth-oriented game programmes, animation, comedy, and bizarre documentaries. VH1, a sister network, was launched in 1985 to cater to a little older demographic, and by the 1990s, MTV had affiliates all over the world.

Referencing:

[abhikrajput]

It’s time for the “Digital Detox”. Have realised since past 7-8 years major part of my life was revolving around social media. Most of the times my activities, my travels, my food or parties where done in a particular way to get insta worthy pics. Guess it’s time to take a break may be for few weeks as we need all kind of detoxification in life 🙃 so it’s time to stay away from Facebook & Insta and try to spend more time with the real social network . Well let’s see for how long will be able to take this break. #digitaldetox #socialmedia #facebook #instagram #break #realnetwork #detoxification (at Somewhere on the Earth) https://www.instagram.com/p/B6A03O7liSW/?igshid=ev5rpxkjbeo1

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Patent troll's IP more powerful than Apple's

I was 12 years into my Locus Magazine column when I published the piece I'm most proud of, "IP," from September 2020. It came after an epiphany, one that has profoundly shaped the way I talk and think about the issues I campaign on.

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

That revelation was about the meaning of the term "IP," which had been the center of this tedious linguistic cold war for decades. People who advocate for free and open technology and culture hate the term "IP" because of its ideological loading and imprecision.

Ideology first: Before "IP" came into wide parlance - when lobbyists for multinational corporations convinced the UN to turn their World Intellectual Property Organization into a specialized agency, we used other terms like "author's monopolies" and "regulatory monopolies."

"Monopoly" is a pejorative. "Property" is sacred to our society. When a corporation seeks help defending its monopoly, it is a grubby corrupter. When it asks for help defending its property, it is enlisting the public to defend the state religion.

Free culture people know allowing "monopolies" to become "property" means losing the battle before it is even joined, but it is frankly unavoidable. How do you rephrase "IP lawyer" without conceding the property point? "Trademark-copyright-patent-and-related-rights lawyer?"

Thus the other half of the objection to "IP": its imprecision. Copyright is not anything like patent. Patent is not anything like trademark. Trade secrets are an entirely different thing again. Don't let's get started on sui generis and neighboring rights.

And this is where my revelation came: as it is used in business circles, "IP" has a specific, precise meaning. "IP" means, "Any law, policy or regulation that allows me to control the conduct of my competitors, critics and customers."

Copyright, patent and trademark all have limitations and exceptions designed to prevent this kind of control, but if you arrange them in overlapping layers around a product, each one covers the exceptions in the others.

Creators don't like having their copyrights called "author's monopolies." Monopolists get to set prices. All the copyright in the world doesn't let an author charge publishers more for their work. The creators have a point.

But when author's monopolies are acquired by corporate monopolists, something magical and terrible happens.

Remember: market-power monopolies are still (theoretically) illegal and when companies do things to maintain or expand their monopolies, they risk legal jeopardy.

But: The corporate monopolist who uses IP to expand their monopoly has no such risk. Monopolistic conduct in defense of IP enjoys wide antitrust forbearance. What's the point of issuing patents or allowing corporations to buy copyrights if you don't let them enforce them?

The IP/market-power monopoly represents a futuristic corporate alloy, a new metal never seen, impervious to democratic control.

Software is "IP" and so any device with software in it is like beskar, a rare metal that can be turned into the ultimate corporate armor.

No company exemplifies this better than Apple, a company that used limitations on IP to secure its market power, then annihilated those limits so that no one could take away its market power.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay

In the early 2000s, Apple was in trouble. The convicted monopolist Microsoft ruled the business world, and if you were the sole Mac user in your office, you were screwed.

When a Windows user sent you a Word file, you could (usually) open it in the Mac version of Word, but then if you saved that file again, it often became forever cursed, unopenable by any version of Microsoft Office ever created or ever to be created.

This became a huge liability. Designers started keeping a Windows box next to their dual processor Power Macs, just to open Office docs. Or worse (for Apple), they switched to a PC and bought Windows versions of Adobe and Quark Xpress.

Steve Jobs didn't solve this problem by begging Bill Gates to task more engineers to Office for Mac. Instead, Jobs got Apple techs to reverse-engineer all of the MS Office file formats and release a rival office suite, Iwork, which could read and write MS Office files.

That was an Apple power move, one that turned MS's walled garden into an all-you-can-eat buffet of potential new Mac users. Apple rolled out the Switch ads, whose message was, "Every MS Office file used to be a reason *not* to use a Mac. Now it's a reason to switch *to* a Mac."

More-or-less simultaneously, though, Apple was inventing the hybrid market/IP monopoly tool that would make it the most valuable company in the world, in its design for the Ipod and the accompanying Itunes store.

It had a relatively new legal instrument to use for this purpose: 1998's Digital Millennium Copyright Act; specifically, Section 1201 of the DMCA, the "anti-circumvention" clause, which bans breaking DRM.

Under DMCA 1201, if a product has a copyrighted work (like an operating system) and it has an "access control" (like a password or a bootloader key), then bypassing the access control is against the law, even if no copyright infringement takes place.

That last part - "even if no copyright infringement takes place" - is the crux of DMCA 1201. The law was intended to support the practices of games console makers and DVD player manufacturers, who wanted to stop competitors from making otherwise legal devices.

With DVD players, that was about "region coding," the part of the DVD file format that specified which countries a DVD could be played back in. If you bought a DVD in London, you couldn't play it in Sydney or New York.

Now, it's not a copyright violation to buy a DVD and play it wherever you happen to be. As a matter of fact, buying a DVD and playing it is the *opposite* of a copyright infringement.

But it *was* a serious challenge to the entertainment cartel's business-model, which involved charging different prices and having different release dates for the same movie depending on where you were.

The same goes for games consoles: companies like Sega and Nintendo made a lot of money charging creators for the right to sell games that ran on the hardware they sold.

If I own a Sega Dreamcast, and you make a game for it, and I buy it and run it on my Sega, that's not a copyright infringement, even if Sega doesn't like it. But if you have to bypass an "access control" to get the game to play without Sega's blessing, it violates DMCA 1201.

What's more, DMCA 1201 has major penalties for "trafficking in circumvention devices" and information that could be used to build such a device, such as reports of exploitable flaws in the programming of a DRM system: $500k in fines and a 5 year sentence for a first offense.

Deregionalizing a DVD player or jailbreaking a Dreamcast didn't violate anyone's copyrights, but it still violated copyright law (!). It was pure IP, the right to control the conduct of critics (security researchers), customers and competitors.

In the words of Jay Freeman, it's "Felony contempt of business-model."

And that's where the Ipod came in. Steve Jobs's plan was to augment the one-time revenue from an Ipod with a recurrent revenue stream from the Itunes store.

He exploited the music industry's superstitious dread of piracy and naive belief in the efficacy of DRM to convince the record companies to only sell music with his DRM wrapper on it - a wrapper they themselves could not authorize listeners to remove.

Ever $0.99 Itunes purchase added $0.99 to the switching cost of giving up your Ipod for a rival device, or leaving Itunes and buying DRM music from a rival store. It was control over competitors and customers. It was IP.

If you had any doubt that the purpose of Ipod/Itunes DRM was to fight competitors, not piracy, then just cast your mind back to 2004, when Real Media "hacked" the Ipod so that it would play music locked with Real's DRM as well as Apple's.

http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3387871/Apple+RealNetworks+Hacked+iPod.htm

Apple used DMCA 1201 to shut Real down, not to stop copyright infringement, but to prevent Apple customers from buying music from record labels and playing them on their Ipods without paying Apple a commission and locking themselves to Apple's ecosystem, $0.99 at a time.

Pure IP. Now, imagine if Microsoft had been able to avail itself of DMCA 1201 when Iwork was developed - if, for example, its "information rights management" encryption had caught on, creating "access controls" for all Office docs.

There's a very strong chance that would have killed Apple off before it could complete its recovery. Jobs knew the power of interoperating without consent, and he knew the power of invoking the law to block interoperability. He practically invented modern IP.

Apple has since turned IP into a trillion-dollar valuation, largely off its mobile platform, the descendant of the Ipod. This mobile platform uses DRM - and thus DMCA 1201 - to ensure that you can only use apps that come from its app store.

Apple gets a cut of penny you spend buying an app, and every penny you spend within that app: 30% (now 15% for a minority of creators after bad publicity).

IP lets one of the least taxed corporations on Earth extract a 30% tax from everyone else.

https://locusmag.com/2021/03/cory-doctorow-free-markets/

Remember, it's not copyright infringement for me to write an app and you to buy it from me and play it on your Iphone without paying the 30% Apple tax.

That's the exact opposite of copyright infringement: buying a copyrighted work and enjoying it on a device you own.

But it's still an IP violation. It bypasses Apple's ability to control competitors and customers. It's felony contempt of business-model.

It shows that under IP, copyright can't be said to exist as an incentive to creativity - rather, it's a tool for maintaining monopolies.

Which brings me to today's news that Apple was successfully sued by a patent troll over its DRM. A company called Personalized Media Communications whose sole product is patent lawsuits trounced Apple in the notorious East Texas patent-troll court.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-19/apple-told-to-pay-308-5-million-for-infringing-drm-patent

After software patents became widespread - thanks to the efforts of Apple and co - there was a bonanza of "inventors" filing garbage patents with the USPTO whose format was "Here's an incredibly obvious thing...*with a computer*." The Patent Office rubberstamped them by the million.

These patents became IP, a way to extract rent without having to make a product. "Investors" teamed up with "inventors" to buy these and impose a tax on businesses - patent licensing fees that drain money from people who make things and give it to people who buy things.

They found a court - the East Texas court in Marshall, TX - that was hospitable to patent trolls. They rented dusty PO boxes in Marshall and declared them to be their "headquarters" so that they could bring suits there.

Locals thrived - they got jobs as "administrators" (mail forwarders) for the thousands of "businesses" whose "head office" was in Marshall (when you don't make a product, your head office can be a PO box).

Productive companies facing hundreds of millions - billions! - in patent troll liability sought to curry favor with locals (who were also the jury pool) by "donating" things to Marshall, like the skating rink Samsung bought for the town.

https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/why-south-korea-s-samsung-built-the-only-outdoor-skating-rink-in-texas

Patent, like copyright, is supposed to serve a public purpose. There are only two clauses in the US Constitution that come with explanations (the rest being "truths held to be self-evident"): the Second Amendment and the "Progress Clause" that creates patents and copyrights.

Famously, the Second Amendment says you can bear arms as part of a "well-regulated militia."

And the Progress Clause? It extends to Congress the power to create patents and copyrights "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts."

I'm with Apple in its ire over this judgment. Sending $308.5m to a "closely held" patent troll has nothing to do with the "Progress of Science and useful Arts."

But it has *everything* to do with IP.

If copyright law can let Apple criminalize - literally criminalize - you selling me If copyright law can let Apple criminalize - literally criminalize - you selling me your copyrighted work, then there's no reason to hate on patent trolls.

They're just doing what trolls do: blocking the bridge between someone engaged in useful work and the customers for that work, and extracting a toll. It's not even 30%.

There is especial and delicious irony in the fact that the patent in question is a DRM patent: a patent for the very same process that Apple uses to lock down its devices and prevent creators from selling to customers without paying the 30% Apple Tax.

But even without that, it's as good an example of what an IP marketplace looks like: one in which making things becomes a liability. After all, the more you make, the more chances there are for an IP owner to demand tax from you to take it to market.

The only truly perfect IP is the naked IP of a patent troll, the bare right to sue, a weapon made from pure abstract legal energy, untethered from any object, product or service that might be vulnerable to another IP owner's weapons.

A coda: you may recall that Apple doesn't use DRM on its music anymore: you can play Itunes music on any device. That wasn't a decision Apple took voluntarily: it was forced into it by a competitor: Amazon, an unlikely champion of user rights.

In 2007, the record labels had figured out that Apple had lured them into a trap, selling millions of dollars worth of music that locked both listeners and labels into the Itunes ecosystem.

In a desperate bid for freedom, they agreed to help Amazon launch its MP3 store - all the same music, at the same prices...without DRM. Playable on an Ipod, but also on any other device.

Prior to the Amazon MP3 store, the market was all DRM: you could either buy Apple's DRM music and play it on your Ipod, or you could buy other DRM music and play it on a less successful device.

The Amazon MP3 store (whose motto was "DRM: Don't Restrict Me") changed that to "Buy Apple DRM music and play it on your Ipod, or buy Amazon music and play it anywhere." That was the end of Apple music DRM.

So why hasn't anyone done this for the apps that Apple extracts the 30% tax on? IP. If you made a phone that could play Ios apps, Apple would sue you:

https://gizmodo.com/judge-tosses-apple-lawsuit-against-iphone-emulator-in-b-1845967318

And if you made a device that let you load non-App Store apps on an Iphone, Apple would also sue you.

Apple understands IP. It learned the lesson of the Amazon MP3 store, and it is committed to building a world where every creator pays a tax to reach every Apple customer.