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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?"
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;
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.
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."
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 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! :)
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