Hollywood Fights RealDVD in Court Battle
Posted By L. Anthony Bompiani, Esquire on Apr 26, 2009 11:25am PDT
Hollywood blasts RealDVD
calling it "rent, rip and return" and contends it's one of the biggest
technological threats to the movie industry's annual $20 billion DVD
market - software that allows you to copy a film without paying for it.
On Friday, the trial began between RealNetworks, Inc.
and Hollywood's six largest movie studios. Attorneys for the studios
argue that RealNetworks Inc.'s DVD "ripper" is an illegal digital
piracy tool, which violates a federal law known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The Act was signed into law by President Clinton in 1998.
The company claims that the $29.99 software that allows DVDs to be easily copied to computer hard drives is legitimate and actually adds more stringent protections to prevent piracy or other illegal copying. Specifically,
the Seattle-based company says its RealDVD product is designed to
simply let customers back up a purchased DVD and that the software
allows for only one copy to be made.
The
three-day trial is being heard by the same federal judge who shut down
music-swapping site Napster in 2000 because of copyright violations.
In
October, U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel temporarily barred
sales of RealDVD after the product was on the market for a few days. At
the time, the judge said it appeared the software did violate federal
law against digital piracy, but ordered detailed court filings and the
trial to better understand how RealDVD works.