RealNetworks loses critical ruling in RealDVD case
A federal court has found enough evidence to decide that RealDVD, the software that enables users to copy DVDs and store digital duplicates on a hard drive, violates U.S. copyright law.
Facet, the DVD player that copied and stored digital movies, will not be hitting store shelves anytime soon.
(Credit: Greg Sandoval/CNET)U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Patel on Tuesday issued a preliminary injunction that will prevent RealNetworks from selling the $30 software until a jury can decide the issue. That will undoubtedly keep RealDVD and Facet, Real's prototype DVD player, off store shelves for an indefinite period. Facet also makes digital copies and stores them to a built in hard drive.
The decision represents a major victory for the film studios, which had accused Real of violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and breach of contract in a lawsuit filed last fall. Had the decision gone against the film studios and its trade group, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), it would have been an affirmation that consumers have the right to copy their DVDs for personal use. Right now, when a DVD owner loses or breaks a disc, they conceivably must purchase another copy. RealDVD and Facet eliminate the need for discs once copies are made.
But the MPAA argued that Facet and RealDVD are pirate tools that enabled users to copy and redistribute movies and could cost the industry billions. The MPAA has maintained that under the DMCA, consumers do not have the right to copy films--ever.
"We are very pleased with the court's decision," MPAA Chairman and CEO Dan Glickman said in a statement. "This is a victory for the creators and producers of motion pictures and television shows and for the rule of law in our digital economy. Judge Patel's ruling affirms what we have known all along: Real took a license to build a DVD-player and instead made an illegal DVD-copier."
Bart Williams, attorney who argued case for the studios.
(Credit: Munger, Tolles & Olson)"We are disappointed that a preliminary injunction has been placed on the sale of RealDVD," Real said in a statement. The company that makes entertainment software said it would have more to say after it had reviewed Patel's decision.
The big question for Real is whether it has the stomach to continue the fight. The legal fees have already set Real back more than $6 million.
"RealDVD makes a permanent copy of copyrighted DVD content," Patel wrote in her decision, "and by doing so breaches its (Content Scramble System) License Agreement with the (DVD Copy Control Association, the group that oversees the protection of DVDs for the major Hollywood studios) and circumvents a technological measure that effectively controls access to or copying of the Studios' copyrighted content on DVDs."
In her decision, Patel made a play on words using Vegas--Real's code name for RealDVD--to illustrate how the software could lead to the mass pirating of movies.
"Had Real's products been manufactured differently, i.e., if what happened in Vegas really did stay in Vegas," Patel continued, "this might have been a different case. But, it is what it is. Once the distributive nature of the copying process takes hold, like the spread of gossip after a weekend in Vegas, what's done cannot be undone."
Patel's decision is unlikely to surprise anyone who followed the case. During last year's hearings on a temporary injunction and last spring's proceedings on the preliminary injunction, Patel appeared highly skeptical of Real's arguments.
In her questions to both sides' attorneys, Patel seemed concerned about the potential for people to use RealDVD and Facet, to copy rented discs without compensating the creators, a practice known as "rent, rip, and return."
One glaring hole in Real's argument was its assertions that RealDVD didn't circumvent ARccOS and RipGuard because they really aren't anticopying software; and that Real had licensed CSS, the technology designed to prevent unauthorized copying of DVDs, so it was essentially authorized to do what it wanted with it.
The MPAA crushed these arguments in proceedings. The studios showed that both ARccOS and RipGuard are anticopying technologies used by some of the major film studios as a layer of piracy protection in addition to CSS. The studios' lawyers produced documents that revealed ARccOS and RipGuard were effective enough copy protections to stymie Real's engineers, as well as a group of "Ukranian hackers," from cracking them.
One other important detail: ARccOS and RipGuard are not included in the CSS license. By circumventing the technology, Real had risked violating the DMCA, which prohibits the cracking of antipiracy technologies. And that's exactly what happened.
"Real was aware of ARccOS and RipGuard during the development of the RealDVD products," Patel wrote in her 58-page decision. "Real software engineers identified ARccOS and RipGuard as both copy protection systems and barriers to their development of a DVD copying device from the outset of the RealDVD project."
While the courtroom showdown was first billed as a fight over RealDVD, it soon became clear that what was really at stake for Real was Facet.
Real CEO Rob Glaser demonstrated the device in court last spring and showed how an owner could move between films--it holds more than 70--in a way similar to how someone scrolls through an iTunes playlist. I wrote that the device could have helped spur flagging DVD sales and given DVD collectors, such as myself, a way to revitalize their movie collections.
Hollywood, however, is working on its own programs to give consumers access to digital copies after buying a CD. But the studios typically want additional money for the digital copy.
So, now we wait to hear whether Real will carry on the fight. However it turns out, the company has earned kudos from anticopyright proponents for waging the campaign. The question is whether carrying the flag for the free-content crowd is enough of a payoff.
Greg Sandoval covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. E-mail Greg, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sandoCNET. 
So the whole thing is not a debate for me any more, I simply do not buy, rent or even go to movie theaters any more, and I suspect that there will be many more who will take this approach. It is the politicians who passed this bill that are to blame, the corrupt bastards who are bought by the recording companies (money in their freezers) and who give away public money to useless bastard banks. You know the politicians who represent the public interest??? They will all get what is coming to them, "they reap what they sow".
I see most judges are still completely out of touch with society at large and continue to pass useless rulings that virtually no one will abide by. The world is changing and stuffy old people like this judge and those MPAA lawyers are going to be left behind and forgotten.
I am confused as how people are expected to earn a living? Making a movie is not cheap, make a record is not cheap. People who enter these various professions do so with the idea of earning a living.
If all there work is *free* to everyone since some like your self feel there work is crap, then don't buy it someone else may love the crap.
But just because your view is that its crap does not mean it should be free. You may find a car out there that you feel is crap, should it be free?
How about that house? Is it crap maybe is should be free?
You know the local football team sucks, maybe admission should be free?
So when everything is free? We don't need money right? I am confused by all this everything should be free idea.
Like it or not money makes the world work.
I think you missed bigpictures main point. Value is in the eye of the beholder. The MPAA and RIAA degrade the value of their products with DRM and other restrictions on use. In other words they work hard to prevent the enjoyment and that enjoyment is what gives music and movies value.
I'm all for paying for content. I'd love to purchase CDs and DVDs again. I'd like to listen to music again but, with the extra charges on Sirius/XM and the fact that radio is a marketing tool, not a payment tool, the fact that I can't backup my CD's and DVDs when I have kids that are typically destructive and the fact that once I own the rights to view a movie or listen to a CD, I have to pay again if the disc is scratched, I won't buy them anymore. If I am just granted the ability to backup my content as allowed in the BetaMax ruling, I'd start purchasing again. If record labels remembered that radio is a marketing tool to drive record sales, I'd buy CDs again. Yes, I still have my XM subscription but, I only listen to sports and talk now. I won't support an industry out of control and taking away my rights to use what I legally purchased.
We are talking about making backup copy of the DVD I purchased so that I don't need to buy 2 copies or more just because I know one or more of them will break soon. Not everyone in the world are only interested in pirate copies just because they are available. No matter what, there are laws to prevent people from publicly selling pirate copies, anyway!
Why don't this judge stop the sports tools companies from selling baseball bats, just because baseball bats can be used as a tool for killing or hurting people. How about stopping car manufacturers from selling cars since it can be used as a tool to hit buildings and even for terrorist attack?
The judge simply MADE THE WRONG FREAKINIG RULING, and I seriously hope that Real appeals this decision.
Really though...... PIRACY IS THE LIFE FOR ME! It's things like this that make me even LESS willing to spend my money on the MPAA and RIAA's products, and I've heard the same from other people.
With these lawsuits, they are just making themselves look stupid and are making people get pissed with them and turn away from buying ANYTHING from them.
No where does it say I can make a mix cd and give it to my friend, but I can, and it's fair use. Making a back up of your property is fair use. Breaking copy protection to do it is against the law via the DMCA.
What's next? , making it illegal to put the movie on your ipod?
And every automobile on the road has the potential to run over pedestrians and crash through buildings. If you believe Apple, then every cell phone on the planet is a potential threat to national security. So what. Very nearly everything has the potential to be used criminally but until a crime is committed by a small segment of society no one gets to say that the potential to commit a crime is the same thing as committing a crime. And when/if a crime is committed you convict the person who committed the crime not the innocent bystanders who drive their cars safely, don't destroy the world's telecommunications infrastructure, don't pirate films and music, etc. The cartels (MPAA, RIAA) need to be told that the citizens of the world are not their *****, they have the burden of proof, they always have had and so long as they exist always will have to demonstrate conclusively that a crime has been committed. Something which they have long admitted they don't ever even hope to have to ability to do.
Yes, I said it: OUR JUDGES ARE FREAKING CORRUPT in this country. Have been for a LOOOOOOOOOONG time now.
What I find disgusting is that they do not have a solution for when some one buys a legal movie and the gets damaged.
They have not learned their lessons from the napter days with mp3.
They have a solution, buy another.
They did hear it... in the '70's and the '80's with the Sony followed by the BetaMax cases.
Regarding your stupid car analogy, there is a difference between a car and digital data. Your car doesn't stop working if a bird **** on it but a DVD and the digital data that it stores does cease to work after only minor and superficial damage.
How can one industry be so brain dead.
As long as they can make sure this mAdamSS Marilyn Patel is still in charge of the case, they will earn a lot of money from all of the companies who sells operating systems.
The whole trial is rather funny, really. I know of a local guy with over a terabyte of movie files on his hard drive, all of which were downloaded from Chinese Web sites - where US copyright laws are laughed at. He gets perfect quality and pays zero. RealNetworks only wanted to allow legitimate consumers, who actually paid for their DVDs, to make a convenient backup copy, but this ignorant judge is calling them criminals, so obviously the smart people are going to download from pirate sites, and not buy DVDs they aren't allowed to copy legally.
- by Thad Boyd August 12, 2009 3:36 PM PDT
- "RealDVD makes a permanent copy of copyrighted DVD content."
- Like this Reply to this comment
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (53 Comments)The word "permanent" is, I think, key here, because of course you make a TEMPORARY copy of a movie every time you play a DVD on your computer -- to volatile memory. (This, incidentally, is why more complex encryption schemes, like AACS, are inevitably broken -- computers aren't magic black boxes, and decryption data has to be stored SOMEWHERE.)
"circumvents a technological measure that effectively controls access to or copying of the Studios' copyrighted content on DVDs."
Maybe "effectively" is one of those words that means something different in a legal context than in ordinary speech, because CSS is about as effective at copy protection as a piece of string would be for locking my front door. There are deCSS implementations that run less than half a kilobyte. CSS is a joke.
I wonder how half-assed a copy protection scheme would have to be before it was no longer covered under the DMCA's anti-circumvention clause. Could I make a program that simply says "Would you like to copy this program? [Yes/No] DO NOT CLICK YES" and claim that anyone who clicked Yes was circumventing my copy protection mechanism?