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Real Settles Lawsuits, Will Stop Selling RealDVD

Posted by timothy on from the check-with-your-corporate-masters dept.

angry tapir writes "RealNetworks has agreed to pay $4.5 million and permanently stop selling its RealDVD software as part of a legal settlement with six Hollywood movie studios. The lawsuits date back to 2008 and Slashdot has previously discussed them. RealDVD is an application that lets people make copies of their DVDs."

3 of 139 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What is the tehnical issue here? by TheThiefMaster · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's simple, the CSS key is stored in normally unreadable/unwritable areas of the disk, so a straight copy misses the key and it won't play. However, if you decrypt it and burn the decrypted version to a new disk, it will play fine.

  2. Re:Oh no, we're screwed! by butlerm · · Score: 3, Informative

    If all he did was make a copy of a DVD, I beg to differ. DMCA Section 1201:

    (a) Violations Regarding Circumvention of Technological Measures. -- (1)(A) No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title. ...
    (c) Other Rights, Etc., Not Affected. -- (1) Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title.

  3. Re:dd if=/dev/dvd of=dvd.iso by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    No, CSS isn't to prevent you from copying the disk at all. You can quite easily copy a CSS protected disk, and the copy will still be encrypted of course, but it will play fine. (and Mplayer, VLC, etc. will break CSS in real time and play from an encrypted VOB/ISO/Physical Disc).

    The only reason some DVDs are hard to rip recently is because they have some *other* protection that *does* prevent you from copying them easily. Usually they have the sectors set up in an odd way, so that if you try to play the video straight through it works, but if you try to copy the whole disk instead, it will result in like 9000 gigabytes of data. (i.e. they have a lot of extra sectors listed on files that aren't used or something like that).

    CSS isn't copy protection, it's *use* protection. You can't convert the video into another format if it's CSS encrypted. You can't make a PSP or iPod version, f.e., if you can't decrypt it. You also can't make a small DivX or whatever to send on p2p networks. (Of course you could just upload the whole CSSed ISO, which anyone can play...)