Judge halts RealDVD sales until at least Tuesday
RealNetworks this weekend suspended selling its RealDVD software in response to the request of a judge who needed time to review the legal issues involving the software, the company confirmed today.
In U.S. District Court in San Francisco on Tuesday, Judge Marilyn Hall Patel will take up two lawsuits involving the software, which allows users to copy DVDs to their computer hard drives. RealDVD went on sale last week, claiming to be the first legal and easy way to copy movies. On the same day, RealNetworks, whose chief executive, Rob Glaser, is pictured above, and Hollywood studios sued each other.
The movie industry says the software violates copyrights, allowing people to “rent, rip and return” movies from a rental store. RealNetworks says the software is meant to be used with DVDs one owns. It sued preemptively so that a court would decide the matter.
Today, on RealDVD's website, a note reads: "Due to recent legal action taken by the Hollywood movie studios against us, RealDVD is temporarily unavailable. Rest assured, we will continue to work diligently to provide you with software that allows you to make a legal copy of your DVDs for your own use."
"Irreparable Harm ... Not," argues Fred von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who in a blog post takes apart the claims that RealDVD injures the copyright holders. But at AllThingsD, John Paczkowski says that RealDVD "users are on the honor system," which isn't exactly Hollywood's idea of copyright protection.
-- Michelle Quinn
Photo: RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser in 2001. Credit: Rick Maiman / Bloomberg News
The whole flap over this seems rather silly to me... There's just no practical way to prevent distribution of software that lets people copy video from a DVD. You can go after file sharers because media files tend to be rather large and there are a lot of repeat offenders, so over time, might be able to scare most people into respecting copy right, but preventing the dissemination of DVD ripping programs that are only a couple hundred kilobytes just isn't possible. Therefore, I can't see any real purpose in getting RealDVD off the market.
Moreover, people have a fair use right to back up the DVDs they own. Why is this right important and useful? This provides protection against damaged and lost discs, allows people to tote videos around without carrying around a ton of DVDs, and lets them copy the data over to more modern media when DVDs become obsolete and are no longer supported by modern devices.
Posted by: Matt | October 06, 2008 at 05:43 PM
What is difference between converting dvd's to a portable format or a cd to mp3? This is stupid idea for movie studios to be greedy and make people pay several times over for the same movie. If it weren't for the people who buy their movie, they wouldn't be rich. I don't want to have to pay $20 for a movie on dvd just to have to download it from a service again for an additional fee when you should be able to use it on other devices too. So how about people who are at your house watching the movie? They don't gripe about that. How about if I had a hundred people at my house watching it? I think the movie industry need to quit nit picking and get into the 21st century. After all, they still make 5 to 10 times profit or more from us.
Posted by: REAL | October 06, 2008 at 05:56 PM
The movie industry has perverted the copyright. Years ago it was 28 years renewable. This was similar to the patent.
Patents and copyrights are a trade of exclusive use for a period of time in exchange for sharing knowledge. It is to encourage the sharing of knowledge.
Today, the industry thinks that their ownership should be forever. They just haven't gotten that far since the constitution says it is for a period of time. The time seems to get longer and longer.
Equity suggests a reasonable period of use for the author. 10 years 20 years. When I get a patent, my company gets 20 years. It seems reasonable. Why should the copyright be longer.
It is likely, that copyrights will stop being meaningful because at the core they require respect by the public. The greed of the industry does not foster respect.
Copying is now very easy.
Posted by: ransom | October 06, 2008 at 05:57 PM
What is to stop me from copying a movie from HBO directly on a desk?. Nothing. If I take my copy and put it on my hard drive, who can stop me?. No one.
I undertand the point of renting and ripping, but any of the current flicks will appear on the pay channel and wham, its mine no rental needed. The argument does not hold water. That is way a percentage of the sale of disks goes to the record companies and the studio. This whole argument was trashed out when tape machines hit the market years ago. Yet, it always resurfaces. I don't understand the need to copy these movies. It just takes up space on th HD and slows it down. There is no point. The dvd's are portable, besides, how may times can you watch the same flick over and over? If you have a life, very few.
Posted by: jgny | October 06, 2008 at 06:01 PM
I vaguely remember something called the 'VCR' that Sony got sued over. Guess who won?
Posted by: JPnh | October 06, 2008 at 06:18 PM
Far too much time, money, and court resources have been and are still being spent on this. Here's the reality: the copy protection system known as CSS which is supposed to prevent the duplication of DVDs is not a secret, and hasn't been a secret for years. There are many readily available software programs available that decode DVDs - and those programs are available on internet sites hosted in countries that do not have laws enacted on behalf of the movie studios.
Is preventing the casual duplication of DVDs by Joe Smith on the street worth all of this? The real economic damage is being done by criminals who are duplicating and selling copyrighted material all over the world - using the aforementioned readily available software - and stopping RealDVD isn't going to matter one little bit in all of this.
All of the DRM technology misses the point. If someone wants to copy a piece of media, it's going to get copied. Figure that reality into what you charge for the product and let's spend our time dealing with important stuff like kids who are going hungry and old people who can't afford to see a doctor.
Where are our priorities, people?
Celeborn
Posted by: Celeborn | October 06, 2008 at 06:28 PM
I have a possible solution that may solve this whole problem, But it would take both the Hollywood studios and Real Networks to play nice. Why doesn't the Hollywood studios add a program that will allow for a single backup from the program RealDVD. Once the DVD has been backed up, REALDVD will close the program letting it know not to be backed up again. Just an idea...
Posted by: Dave | October 06, 2008 at 06:49 PM
There is an alternative. Switch to linux. K9copy is a great dvd backup tool, and it is free! Imagine that.
Posted by: Charlie Bradley | October 07, 2008 at 06:30 AM