Recently discovered user-tracking behavior in RealNetworks's music software has music consumers taking the company to real court over real privacy violation accusations and other charges.
Plaintiffs filed in federal district court charging RealNetworks with violating federal and state law by misrepresenting use and collection of personal information from RealJukebox software users, according to Wired. The suit says RealNetworks assigned a global unique identifier without a user's knowledge and compiled information about his or her music listening habits - a violation of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act as well as state privacy and consumer protection laws.
This comes on the heels of a California suit against RealNetworks last week for invasion of privacy, trespass, and unfair competition. The Pennsylvania action wants software refunds and for RealNetworks to offer access to the information it collected, Wired says, as well as asking the company to publish a remediation plan on its Web site.
These actions come a week after TRUSTe announced it would investigate how RealNetworks collected data - which itself followed a New York Times report saying RealJukebox's software watched listening habits and sent the information and the user's identity to the company.
The Times said RealJukebox extracts a globally unique identifier from the user, snoops on the user's hard drive for the number of songs and the formats in which they are stored, as well as "associat(ing) the data with a unique serial number that can identify the user." That information, in turn, is sent to RealNetworks servers, the Times said.
