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In Response To Restraining Order, Real Networks Pulls RealDVD
eldavojohn writes "RealNetworks' product that allows one to copy a DVD containing a movie has been pulled. You may recall us discussing RealDVD and its legal implications." According to the linked BBC report, "RealNetworks — the firm behind the software — has responded to restraining order issued by a US court stopped selling the RealDVD software [sic]. Six major movie studios jointly sued the company on 30 September — the day the software was launched."
I can count several other program doing exactly the same job and there are some which are not freeware but can be bought. Probably only because they got too much attention?
Isn't there other software that allows you to copy/rip DVDs ?
Not commercial. There are open source tools that you can accomplish this with and there are certainly shady products you can find online that aren't supported and probably aren't owned and operated inside the United States. The important thing is that they are not sold at Best Buy nor are they easy to use. I know ways of doing it with Ubuntu but your average person is still mystified that typing something on a command line causes my DVD player to do something.
DVD X Copy comes to mind although I've never used it, that's the most commercial looking stuff I've ever seen. And this is what its site says:
Authentic DVDXCopy software is no longer being sold anywhere.
In response to:
If there isn't, can I write one and get sued ? At least I'd get my name in the papers...
Sir, you need look no further than the RIAA/MPAA to be sued. Why bother writing software when you can simply create a single backup copy of a CD or DVD for your personal use and notify them that you have done so. Your name won't make the papers but you will be sued. I'm certain they will be able to show that since you had it on your computer and your computer was connected to the internet, you were distributing it to several thousand other people who had no legal right in owning it. You won't be sued for the additional price of that media, you will be sued $75,000 because that's how much money you thieved from them! And thus you can be part of the ridiculous system that is digital music today!
My work here is dung.
I'm not really sure what Real Networks was thinking when they came up with the idea of this software. How could they not assume that this software would attract a lawsuit? The MPAA are a bunch of assholes anyway. I recently moved to Europe, and I was reminded of the BS when I found out that I can't lend my DVDs, which I had legally purchased in Canada, to my friends because of region encoding. Now that I'm reminded of this BS, I will no longer purchase any DVD movies.
You can condemn the aggression even if you don't like the victim.
Or I can laugh at one pack of assholes beating up on another pack of assholes. Each to his own, I guess. ;-)
I'm guessing it's because it's the audio home recording act and this is video.
Having owned a home audio CD recorder for many years, I can tell you that the AHRA was an interesting compromise. Home audio CD recorders do not accept standard CD-R media, but require special "audio" or "music" CD-R media that contains some encoded information that tells the recorder that it's an "audio CD-R."
The system also incorporated a technical mechanism that allowed for only first-generation bit-for-bit digital copying--you could make a bit-for-bit copy of a commercial original, but you couldn't copy the copy. (The machines, however, make a really excellent analog copy of a digital copy).
It was, I thought, really acceptable. It made casual copying convenient, you paid a quite reasonable amount for doing it, you were paying for the copy and not "pirating."
Manufacturers of audio CD-R media are required to pay a small amount of money to an agency that divvies it up between artists and music publishers.
One of the things that pushed me over the edge into a raging anti-RIAA crank was that when they started fooling around with "copy-protected" CDs, they made them uncopiable in audio home CD recorders.
In other words, here I was, an honest user, paying for every copy and keeping my end of the deal, and there they were, reneging on the deal.
I'm now utterly opposed to DRM because I'm convinced that the publishers cannot be trusted to limit themselves to enforcing rights that they actually possess. When allowed to use technical means to enforce their rights, they always overreach. They do not possess a six-year-old's sense of basic fair play.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
8-Track -> Line-in -> Audacity -> Vorbis -> Done.
This comment is for entertainment purposes only. Any similarity to real insight or information is purely coincidental.
The problem with laughing at injustice to assholes, is that some day you will be the asshole. (And in Soviet Russia, asshole laughs at you.)
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Perhaps there is an ulterior motive? Is this some collaborative ploy to get DVD fair-use copying to be officially declared illegal?
Holy crap, that's awesome. My dad was the original h4x0r... he actually wired up a reel-to-reel in the family van and would play music on it while we roadtripped to visit my grandparents in Florida. His music of choice? "Alabama", "The Statler Brothers", and John Philip Sousa marches. It's a wonder to me, sometimes, that I even made it to adulthood. Might explain some things, too. 0_o
1. TPB -> Deluge -> Done.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
I love the phrases "Congress banned..." and "Congress did not prohibit...". Congress would be quite interested to hear that. Congress is made of people, after all, and they almost never have the tiniest clue as to how their laws will be interpreted by trained nit-pickers. The idea that they did any of this intentionally is farcical. A more realistic phrase would be something like "Due to a bizarre, completely unanticipated technicality in over-analysed legalese, we are not allowed to ..."
This reminds me of literary analysis. People will get PhDs writing about what some 300-year-old poem really meant, but they never think to ask the poet (ouija boards have come a long way...). Only in this case people are actually affected by this literarary masturbation.
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."