RealNetworks' day in court ends in loss

By Jake Widman
Wednesday, 12 August 2009 22:59

Development

A U.S. District Court judge has enjoined RealNetworks from selling its RealDVD software that copies DVDs to the user's hard disk.

This latest round in the digital copyright wars got underway last April , when the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) sued RealNetworks, claiming that RealDVD violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Real countersued.

RealDVD is software that enables consumers back up commercial DVDs that they own to a hard disk and later play them from the hard disk rather than from the original DVD.

Real claimed that since RealDVD also copied the copy protection built into the DVD, it didn't violate the DMCA.

It also claimed that making personal backups of DVDs was fair use, and that the studios had no right to prohibit it.

In her injunction, Judge Marilyn Hall Patel -- the same Judge Patel who presided over the famous Napster case -- acknowledged the validity of some of Real's points but ultimately accepted nearly all of the MPAA's arguments.

In doing so, she reaffirmed some of the more troubling aspects of the DMCA.

For more on the Real decision, see Page 2.