http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/10/judge-renews-de.html
One week ago, RealNetworks introduced RealDVD. For $30, consumers can (or rather, could) save, organize, and watch DVDs on their computers, allowing movies to be watched without the physical disc. As the first legal product of its kind, RealDVD is very desirable to millions of people who have wanted to use their laptops to watch movies with ease. With each movie taking up about 8GB of data, portable hard drives are perfect for storing entire movie collections. From there, multiple copies can be made onto blank discs and watched on DVD players. While it sounds like it gives people more opportunity to pirate movies, the software sounds to be completely legal in itself.
However, after only a few days on the market, RealDVD has been brought down as a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). On Tuesday, a federal judge upheld an earlier decision to ban RealNetworks from selling this product. "This is literally a bit for bit copy of the dvd," claims RealNetworks attorney James DiBoise. Thus, from my understanding, any encryption on the physical disc is also on the digital copy. I see ripping movies to my computer no different from ripping CDs, from a legal perspective.
Hearing this reminds me of Bunnie Huang. Microsoft classified him as a troublemaker for hacking the Xbox and showing thousands of other gamers how. Like the majority of us consumers, his view is that if we have paid money for something, we can use it how we want. When it comes to RealDVD, this may include making backup copies of our movies for our own use. MPAA attorney Bart Williams disagrees, insisting that copying movies is not fair use.
RealNetworks sounds confident that this sweet program will be back on shelves before long. Whether this optimism is justified or not, I'm sure they aren't done fighting. RealDVD could be a big stepping stone for DVD ripping software. And surely, over time, programs like this would come as free software with new computers. If the courts legalize RealDVD, some people are predicting iTunes to soon follow with similar capabilities, which would give all computer users the ability to legally digitize their movie collection costing no more than hard drive space.
more information about RealDVD can be found here and at www.realdvd.com.
- Jordan Morsberger
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1 comment:
I completely agree with the RealNetworks attorney. It's not at all different from copying a CD, and there are countless programs available for that purpose. It's ridiculous how common sense almost always takes a backseat to legal technicalities when it comes to copyright law. In this case, the judge didn't just ignore the rules that would apply if this were a physical product like a book, she didn't even consider other digital media.
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