The long, tired saga of Hollywood media companies lashing out because they are frightened by technology continues.
Earlier this week a judge ruled in favor of several movie studios who had sued to block the distribution of a software product called Real DVD that allows consumers to make backup copies of DVDs they've purchased to their computer hard drive.
PC World gives the background:
RealNetworks' RealDVD was handed a devastating blow yesterday as U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel realdvd copyright in a case pitting the two against each other regarding the right to copy films onto one's hard drive. She granted a preliminary injunction against sale of RealDVD, pending a trial over copyright infringement. A cluster of Hollywood honchos, including Paramount, Sony, Universal Studios, and Walt Disney filed suit against RealDVD back in September. Now RealDVD's site is a headstone: "RealDVD is Currently Unavailable."
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The argument stems from the Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998. Circumventing encryption technology on digital media was made illegal by the DMCA. According to Patel's decision, RealDVD broke through a DVD's Content Scramble System code in order to transfer movies onto hard drives.
But RealDVD was very stringent with its copying program. The basic package allowed for only a single digital copy to be placed on your hard drive. After paying extra licensing fees, you could transfer the digital copy onto as many as five other hard drives. Disc-based burning was never an option.
Meanwhile, programs such as the VLC Media Player flaunt the law and provide software that allows for real-time copying. So why is the MPAA hard up for RealDVD and not these other products? It seems to me that the MPAA has chosen a battle against RealDVD to set an example but is perhaps ignorant of the proliferation of DVD-ripping programs available.
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It's sad that RealDVD, with its sophisticated and lawful approach to DVD-copying, had to swallow the wrath of the MPAA. It's also clear that the DMCA needs to be updated to reflect the changes in media distribution 11 years later. It's perfectly legal to rip music from a CD and upload it onto an iPod for personal use; why can't a person do the same with their own copies of movies? The assumption is that everyone using a program such as RealDVD is a criminal bent on ripping as many Netflix movies as possible, rather than a law-abiding citizen who simply wants to watch flicks on the go. For an organization that supposedly has its finger on the pulse of moviegoers, the MPAA strikes me as horribly distrustful and curmudgeonly in its approach to modern times.
This MyDD post on the Real DVD lawsuit gives it some context:
Along with the 1996 Telecom Act, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was one of the worst legacies of the Clinton years. Unlike the Defense of Marriage Act or the faux Welfare Reform Act, both the Telecom Act and the DMCA pretended to be forward looking bills that would usher us into a more prosperous 21st Century.
Rotten at the root, the DMCA continues to bear poison fruit. The latest is the ruling by the infotainment industrial complex' favorite judge Marylin Patel (the judge who killed Napster and inadvertantly the music industry in 2000) to ban Real DVD -- an innocuous technology that allows consumers to make personal copies of the DVDs they have purchased.
GoodMorning Silicon Valley piles on:
The insidious breadth of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was on display again Tuesday, with U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel, as expected, granting the movie industry’s request for a preliminary injunction barring the sale of RealDVD, software designed for copying a DVD to a computer hard drive for backup and portable personal use. The RealNetworks product was ready for market almost a year ago, but was stopped in its tracks by Patel’s temporary restraining order (see “DVD ripper launches, followed by traditional exchange of lawsuits“). Now the program will remain in limbo until a full trial, perhaps a year or two away.
Here’s the thing. Anyone interested in pirating movies would not buy RealDVD. Not only does the program copy a DVD with its protective CSS encryption intact, it also adds its own digital rights management system to limit the copy to a maximum of five computers. There are dozens of free and easily available programs floating around that allow copying with far more options and none of the restrictions. RealDVD would appeal to the folks who don’t want anything to do with hacking or cracking, but simply want a legit way to back up the DVDs they’ve purchased and enjoy them as they see fit, including on a computer screen.
You might think that making a personal backup copy would be considered a fair use exception to copyright law, but according to Judge Patel, the DMCA prevents her from even getting to that issue. “The court appreciates Real’s argument that a consumer has a right to make a backup copy of a DVD for their own personal use,” she wrote. “While it may well be fair use for an individual consumer to store a backup copy of a personally-owned DVD on that individual’s computer, a federal law has nonetheless made it illegal to manufacture or traffic in a device or tool that permits a consumer to make such copies.” In other words, as the law stands, no tool can legally perform what is likely a legal act. This does not bode well for Real in the full trial of the case, and it’s another sign that the problems with the DMCA won’t be remedied in the courtroom but will need to be addressed by Congress, this time with a little less concern for the entertainment industry’s business model and a little more for the reasonable rights of the honest consumer.
This case might not strike you as critical, but the implications are profound. Powerful industries like the Hollywood studios use their power to lobby for bad laws. Then they use those laws to protect themselves from technologies they fear. The end result is that our free speech rights as well as the ability of entrepreneurs to innovate are both thrown out like the proverbial baby in the bath water.