Oy, what a headache. Honestly, folks, you're lucky if you lost all interest in RealNetworks's fake-consumer-advocacy FreedomofMusicChoice.org site last week once the initial chuckles over its hideously botched launch had subsided, because if you'd wound up obsessed like us, you'd be fuming over the site's latest developments just like we are. There's a level of shamelessness inherent in the actions of Rob Glaser and his crew over the past week that, frankly, we thought was reserved strictly for Microsoft antitrust lawyers. Scary stuff.

Remember when it launched, the site claimed to be "an invitation for your dialogue and thoughts, whether it's about us or any other player on the field" and allowed users to register so they could contribute to the discussion by posting comments after its articles? Remember when they pulled the comments feature in a blind panic when it became apparent that all of the comments were pro-Apple and anti-Real? Remember when Real suddenly realized how bad that looked, and the comments came back, complete with a few fishy "hey, Real is okay" comments tacked on by, er, "somebody"? Well, faithful viewer Phil Breske informs us that the comments are gone again-- as is any way to register for an account or log in. In fact, all former references to "dialogue" are gone; the site now says it's "intended as a destination for consumers to learn more about the issues of music choice in the growing digital music arena." In other words, "sit down, shut up, and listen to us whine incessantly because we weren't the ones who invented the iPod."

Nowhere is the whole "preaching to the heathens" attitude more obvious than in the new "Rock On, Rob!" Q & A corner, in which the Q's are asked not by actual visitors to the site, but by some ghostly disembodied Voice of Real which exists solely to lob slow pitches at Rob Glaser so he can recite sanctimonious A's about how Real "stands up for consumer choice." Given how wrong and self-serving his scripted responses are, it's no wonder he didn't want to try this with an audience that could talk-- or post-- back. Consider this little excerpt: "You buy a CD and you can play it back on any CD player. That's the way it's been for decades. Now Apple has tried to change the rules on consumers, but without warning."

Now, see, that's news to us-- we had no idea that, because of Apple, we can no longer buy CDs and play them on any player. Heck, we didn't even know that Apple even sold CDs! Gosh, we're out of touch. Of course, if Rob is dim enough to mean that Apple is changing the rules for legal downloadable music, he's wrong there, too; Apple isn't changing the rules, it's creating them. After all, before April of last year, nobody was really paying for individual song downloads in the first place. If Glaser honestly thinks that digital downloaded music must inherently carry the same "freedom of choice" as traditional CDs, then how come if we Mac users choose to buy our tunes at Real's store, we're shut out at the front door? Gee, we've always been able to buy our CDs at Best Buy, or Tower, or Newbury Comics-- "that's the way it's been for decades."

And how about this lovely bit of shameless distortion: "We have had tens of thousands of people come to the Freedom of Music Choice site, and thousands sign our petition. In fact after a few days it's already one of the top 5 petition campaigns among thousands hosted by the petition service we work with." Gee, he absolutely neglects to mention of the fact that at least 90% of the people originally signing Real's petitions did so expressly to call Glaser a jerk, a thief\, a moron, etc.-- and it also apparently slipped his mind that faithful viewer Michael-Luke Jones's anti-Real petition has consistently had more than twice as many signatures, and (of course) always ranked higher on PetitionOnline's Top Ten Most Active list. (At broadcast time it was at number 9; the Real petition had dropped off the list completely and had only added 128 signatures in the past two and a half days, during which time the anti-Real one had picked up another 393-- over three times as many.)

The distortion continues: "The press has also really picked up on the issue all over the country as well." Um, yes, again, technically true-- not because the press was enthralled by any alleged crusade for inviolable listeners' rights, but because there were about six dozen news stories (like, say, this one) about how Real's cheesy and pitifully transparent attempt to come across as a caring, pro-consumer company backfired worse than anything the world has seen since Wile E. Coyote stopped trying to catch the Road Runner with disaster-prone explosives and jetpacks from ACME.

And what about the common complaint that Real had no right to blame Apple for suppressing freedom of music choice when Real's own service doesn't even support Macs? "We are certainly open to studying the idea of bringing Harmony [Real's DRM-morphing software] to the Mac platform, and I would not rule this out in the future." Gee, Rob, that's great-- of course, it'll do us no good whatsoever since your freakin' store isn't Mac-compatible in the first place, but hey, we'll get to launch Harmony software and use it on squat; what could be more fun? And anyway, what possible reason would we have to buy music from Real, unless you port Harmony (and your store) to the Mac before you stop your "limited time" 49-cent download promotion? Here we are, holding our breath...

Well, at least we get to end on a laugh instead of a tirade: says Rob in his company's defense, "we do have a number of really good products for the Mac, for instance RealPlayer 10 for OS X..." Mmmmmpppghhaaa ha ha ha ha haa! Now that's comedy gold!