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Real Settles Lawsuits, Will Stop Selling RealDVD
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."
I have to agree with Freedomworks (the people who brought you teabaggers) on this. Foes can sometimes turn into friends while fighting a common enenmy.
Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again.
I wasn't aware dd implemented DeCSS.
Technically, I've violated copyright law
No, I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that, in the U.S. anyway, you haven't violated copyright law, not even technically. Now, if you were to begin distributing those copies it's a different matter.
In fact, it might increase sales as I'll be more likely to watch DVD movies I buy and not just regard them as wasted cash.
Ha .. if these little bloodsuckers could get away selling you a disc that would play exactly once and then self-destruct Mission Impossible-style, believe me they would do it. They want you to consider your media a consumable, not a collectible.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Easy to use as it is, Handbrake is still a 'geek market' product. Hollywood knows we're already lost causes in the PR battle, that we know our fair use rights better than most, and that for every OSS program they try to shut down two more will spring up in its place. Not only that, Handbrake has no US presence (AFAIK) and even if it did I can see the EFF (who are experts in precisely this kind of field, and who fight on principle rather than just profit) stepping up to the plate if they did get sued, leading to a potentially messy and drawn out case and PR war for little to no benefit.
RealNetworks, on the other hand, has some (although probably small) measure of brand recognition among the general public. They care about profit and are quite happy to throw the case to the other side if it looks like it'll be the cheapest option. Net result: the entertainment industry gets to put out headlines saying "American company told to stop selling all that nasty illegal DVD copying software", and the general public takes home the message that "DVD copying is illegal". Seems like a fairly deft PR move to me, at least within the context of the Hollywood studio mindset.
I'm not a lawyer either, but you're right. He hasn't violated copyright law. He has violated the DMCA's anti-circumvention clause though.
I remember when all online video was RealVideo.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
except, with those 2 at odds, and the riaa/mpaa with buckets more money than you or i,who do you think would survive the court case? it would drag on for years if you could afford that.
In no location in the US is sex out of wedlock illegal.
When I buy DVDs (which I do more than I should..) the only time the disc is ever touched is when I rip it to drive.
I have a media server with 2.7TB of drive space and I hate fiddling with discs. I have scripts set up to rip and convert the movie to a high quality file with a more decent filesize than raw DVD.
Using this setup I have a whole lot more flexibility when it comes to what I want to watch when... Oh and there is no annoying as hell buzzing from the dvdrom....
The movie industry can, as so eloquently said by the bartender in "Boondock Saints":
"Why dont you make like a tree and get the fuck out of here".
So do I, and they sucked even worse then than they do now. Competetion is good for the consumers!
Free Martian Whores!
So? This says that you can still claim fair use as a defense to copyright infringement. But circumventing DRM isn't a copyright infringement...