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Judge Opens Hearing On RealDVD Legal Battle
FP writes "On Friday morning, lawyers urged a federal judge to bar RealNetworks from selling software that allows consumers to copy their DVDs to computer hard drives, arguing that the Seattle-based company's product is an illegal pirating tool. RealNetworks' lawyers countered later in the morning that its RealDVD product is equipped with piracy protections that limits a DVD owner to making a single copy and is a legitimate way to back up copies of movies legally purchased. This legal battle began with a restraining order last October which stopped the sale of RealDVD. More coverage is available at NPR. The same judge who shut down Napster is presiding over the three-day trial."
Reader IonOtter points out that later in the day, Judge Patel sealed the court after DVD Copy Control Association lawyers "argued that public testimony of aspects of the CSS copy-control technology would violate trade secrets."
I can count how many times I've rooted for Real on a one-bit integer. Yesterday, I didn't even need that.
THL phish sticks
Had the VCR been invented in a copyright climate like today's, would it ever have survived the legal attack against it?
I'm trying to figure out what's different, other than the fact we now have the DMCA.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Yeah, it would really be terrible if de-CSS code were included in court filings, now, wouldn't it? I just have to wonder: doesn't a trade secret have to be secret? Or are they hiding something else these days?
I honestly don't understand. What do they hope to gain by stopping Real?
CSS is broken, in the face, with extreme prejudice. Game over, no victory possible. Free ripping tools are everywhere, if you know(or have that geek guy who knows) where to look. Pirate rips are similarly common. Real's software, by contrast, is insanely restrictive. It is probably harder to pirate a rip made with it than it is to just re-rip the DVD with something civilized. Why would they attack it?
No actual pirate would use it, so taking it off the market is wholly irrelevant to that. Further, by virtue of existing, being under the brand of a company with significant brand awareness, pagerank, etc. it is likely to be the first thing a n00b who wants to put some DVDs on his laptop is going to find. In that respect, it likely serves as a damper to further piracy. If the first thing that comes up when you google "transfer DVD computer" is Real's easy to use, legitimate(to the n00b) looking, and highly restrictive program, the unskilled will probably stop there. This will keep them, in at least some cases, from digging further and coming up with proper techniques.
So that is why I don't understand. This software is of zero use to pirates, who already have better, and might well actually stop n00bs from becoming pirates, by virtue of being easier and almost good enough. Is this just stupidity? A matter of principle? A concern over precedent? Are they trying to maintain the illusion among the public that DVDs cannot be ripped?
If RealDVD is a piracy tool, then so is iTunes (or anything else that allows you to rip CDs).
Judge Patel sealed the court after DVD Copy Control Association lawyers "argued that public testimony of aspects of the CSS copy-control technology would violate trade secrets."
They almost let the cat out of the bag!
This may be good. By now, this judge should realize he made a big mistake in the Napster case. When "Statutory Damages in Copyright Law: A Remedy in Need of Reform" by Pamela Samuelson and Tara Wheatland came out, the Napster case was featured as one of the examples of how justice has gone wrong. Courts have strayed far from the intentions of Congress who wrote the laws governing compensation to copyright holders who's IP have been infringed. There is, for example, absolutely no basis in the law for the practise of awarding huge settlements for the purpose of "setting an example to deter other potential infringers". Congress intended for statutory damages to be mainly compensatory in nature and its wishes have not been respected in the case law. "The application of statutory damages has too often strayed from the compensatory impulse underlying statutory damages ... and has focused too heavily on deterrence and punishment, especially given that too many ordinary infringements are treated as willful infringements" concludes the authors of this paper. I first freely accessed this paper via a temporary link on Recording Industry vs People. Unfortunately, that link has been replaced by a link to where you can buy the paper, but is it no longer available for free, so I will not supply that link.
Recently I was looking at purchasing DVDs of a long-running TV series. I realized that the DVDs with all of their cases would take up a HUGE amount of space! I always watch DVDs via my computer, I don't even own a regular DVD player. Then I realized I actually DON'T WANT physical DVDs! I have enough storage space I could put this huge pile of DVDs on a single hard drive - without even compressing them further.
* All I want is a file I can double click on, sit back, and watch. *
Where can I pay for a licensed download of this kind of stuff? Oh, pretty much nowhere? And, no to work for me it can't be DRMed and must be in a relatively standard codec.
Now, if I could buy a plain DVD with such a file that I could drag-and-drop to my hard drive, and then dispose of the DVD or toss the plain DVD on to a spool somewhere that would be fine too. That might save me from tying up my internet connection for a while. I don't want to have to search through a pile of DVDs to find the one I want.
Technically it is possible to copy DVDs to a hard drive but as everyone here knows that is forbidden by a truckload of laws!!! W... T... F...?!!!!! Not to mention most DVDs are encrypted and many DVDs are damaged in creative ways to try to prevent people from copying them.
If they are so freaking afraid of piracy, they should drop the price enough and make it so it was actually more convenient and desirable to purchase a DVD, then the MPAA could just sit back and watch the torrents dry up!
Oh, and should I mention how painful dealing with most regular DVDs are? Put in the DVD and be forced to watch a dozen commercials for crap? Every time I buy a DVD I feel like I am begin fucked up the ass by Micky Mouse!
So why do I even want a physical MPAA-pressed DVD again? Just sell me what I want dammit!
I doubt he even knows it exists. It's even more doubtful that he has any misgivings about his ruling in the Napster case other than telling his golf buddies recently, "Fuck it, I shoulda added 'Throw dirty little pirate punk in overseas prison for terrorists if we ever build one!" to the sentence."
Just because we have an orgasm about every obscure paper published that attacks current copyright law, it doesn't mean anybody else ever notices those papers. Even if they did notice, they couldn't care less about them.
I'm glad you pointed that out. This decision is legally indefensible and utterly inexcusable. One of the key requirements for something being a trade secret is that it must, in fact, still be a secret. Once knowledge enters into public knowledge through reverse engineering, it is no longer secret, and is no longer legally eligible for trade secret protection.
The disturbing thing is that this is a critical case as far as defining the boundaries for the DMCA and reverse engineering, fair use rights, etc., but because those devious lawyers from the DVD CCA got their way, a significant portion of this important case will be stricken from the public record. This is, of course, what they want. This has nothing to do with protecting any trade secrets and everything to do with hiding their smoke and mirrors from licensees in the hope that they'll keep buying the snake oil^W^WDRM.
Unfortunately, sealing a case like this also does a very serious disservice to the public in this case, and I hope that the EFF and other organizations are taking steps to get this case unsealed again. It is the American people's right to know what is going on behind closed doors in cases dealing with our fundamental fair use rights.
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