RealDVD ripping case opens in court
Testimony begins today in a trial which could have major implications for copyright law. Real Networks will be answering charges that its RealDVD ripping software violates rules illegally bypasses copy protection.
The case was brought by the Motion Picture Association of America, which won the first victory last October when it secure an injunction to stop RealDVD being sold until after the dispute had been settled.
The case is based around the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This law results from the general principle that selling a product which could be used for an illegal purpose (in this case, copying content) isn’t usually illegal in itself. Instead the act makes it illegal to sell any product which bypasses digital copy protection.
Real Networks argues that its software does not do this: it works by copying the entire contents of a disc to a computer, including the copy protection itself. This means users can’t then burn the files to another disc. The MPAA believes this is besides the point and that the mere fact users can copy anything from the DVD is inherently bypassing the copy protection.
There’s also a secondary element to the dispute, which may come up in the trial. The licensing rules of CSS, the copyright system used to protect DVDs, has recently been changed to say that the original disc must be physically present in whichever machine is being used to view it. That would clearly be breached by RealDVD, but Real Networks believes it’s not valid to change the licensing rules unilaterally.
The judge presiding over the case, Marilyn Hall Patel, has some experience of technology cases. She’s previously settled disputes including whether Napster was an Internet service provider and thus protected from liability over its customers’ piracy (it wasn’t), and whether firms could be sued for discrimination if their Web sites were not accessible to blind users (they could).
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April 25th, 2009
What a complete waste of time. And money, and ….. it just saddens me that these things are allowed to come to court. The software is already out there… if you really want it and are half way savvy on the internet you can get it… free. So whats the point except to ruin another business and put more people out of work. All so MPAA and RIAA can go after the next company… and the next… and the next. Why cant they just understand that when it comes to technology… your programmer is just as good as mine. Accept that you cant stop these programs from being created either from a legitimate business… or some hacker dudes who just want to distribute it for free.