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RealNetworks, Film Industry Headed To Court
Posted by
timothy
on Tue Sep 30, 2008 11:41 AM
from the in-your-face-film-industry dept.
from the in-your-face-film-industry dept.
netbuzz writes "Apparently tired of waiting to be sued by the movie studios over its new DVD-to-PC copying software, RealNetworks this morning announced it will file a preemptive lawsuit in an attempt to authoritatively establish that the product does not infringe on copyright restrictions. Within an hour or so, the Motion Picture Association of America said it would have a litigation announcement of its own this afternoon."
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Entertainment: RealNetworks To Introduce a Simple DVD Copier 244 comments
langelgjm writes "The New York Times reports that RealNetworks will begin selling RealDVD today, a software program designed to make copying DVDs a trivial task for the average user. Unlike free alternatives, which generally require some technical knowledge and make it difficult to copy an entire DVD with extras, etc., RealDVD claims to be able to copy the entire DVD, menus and all. While sure to raise the ire of Hollywood, the program does have significant limitations: the DVDs it makes will only be playable on the computer where they were created; or, users can pay $20 per computer to play the DVDs on up to five additional computers."
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Hey look at me (Score:4, Funny)
RealNetworks is saying "Hey look at me everyone! Why doesn't anyone ever notice me?"
wait just a minute here (Score:5, Insightful)
does RealNetworks' DVD copying software _charge users $20_ for burning DVDs playable on multiple computers (still limited to a maximum of 5)?
how can they purport to be a champion of consumer rights/fair use when they're charging users to burn copies of their own DVDs and restricting users from playing these copies from more than 5 computers?
and who exactly are users paying the $20 to for being able to play their copies on more than one computer if not the MPAA or film makers? they actually have the galls to charge users for an additional license fee on works that they don't hold the rights to, and then they're turning around and saying that they're defending fair use rights? what a load of BS.
consumers should be allowed to make backups of their purchases without DRM and usage restrictions. they shouldn't have to pay for the right to make DVD copies that are playable on multiple computers, much less pay RealNetworks for that right.
Parent
Re:wait just a minute here (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:wait just a minute here (Score:5, Informative)
You misread. You pay "$20 per computer" that you want ALL of your ripped DVDs to play on. It's per additional computer that you want authorized to get past thier own DRM crap.
Parent
Re:wait just a minute here (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Appropriately tagged as entertainment (Score:3, Funny)
Because well, it just is. At least for me.
You think this is funny?!!? (Score:5, Funny)
I bet you didn't know that, ahem ..
"The worldwide motion picture industry, including foreign and domestic producers,
distributors, theaters, video stores and pay-per-view operators lose more than $18 billion
annually as a result of movie theft. More than $7 billion in losses are attributed to illegal
Internet distributions, while $11 billion is the result of illegal copying and bootlegging."
http://www.mpaa.org/press_releases/realdvd%20press%20release%209%2030%2008%20final.pdf [mpaa.org]
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I too can see a glaring error in this: The idea that if someone watched or listend to a piece of MAFIAA media without paying it equates to a lost sale. I, for example, watched Spiderman 3 without spending a cent. Did I sneak into a cinema? or watch a Camcorder bootleg? Or watch a ripped DVD? Or download it via P2P? No, none of those things, I went to my brothers house and watched his Blu-ray copy on his PS3 via his HD TV. So not only did the MAFIAA media cartel lose a film sale, Sony lost out on a PS3 sale,
Real...buffering..Networks (Score:5, Funny)
vs the MPAA.
Nope, I give up. I can't decide which I want to lose.
Real vs MPAA (Score:5, Funny)
If we're really lucky, they both will spend exorbitant amounts of money litigating, and then the judge will award $1 to the plaintiff.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
If we're even luckier the judge, bored out of his mind, decides a deathmatch is the way to go. Two executive boards enter, part of one executive board leaves.
Re:Real vs MPAA (Score:4, Funny)
Why don't we follow the Roman method and crucify the surviver, a la Spartacus.
Parent
Re:Real...buffering..Networks (Score:5, Insightful)
You want Real Networks to win. If they win, everyone (but the MPAA) wins. If the MPAA wins, everyone else loses.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, the MPAA wins too. They just don't understand it yet. The better your product works, the more valuable it is and the more of it you'll sell.
It is in the MPAA's direct financial interest that as many people as possible, defeats the MPAA's DRM ASAP.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
you ever been kicked in the nuts? even by accident? i'll take a bat the face before i experience that again
Re: (Score:2)
Can't have have a matter/anti-matter explosion or something, wiping them both out? But as a good number two, I'd rather have RealNetworks win this one since I still wouldn't buy anything from them.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Real...buffering..Networks (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a quote from Henry Kissinger regarding the Iran-Iraq War that is apropos: "The only problem with this war is that only one side can lose."
Parent
Ah! Lawyers... (Score:3, Funny)
Ah! Lawyers...
Always trying to make trouble when there is none yet...
Whuh? (Score:5, Informative)
When did Real become non-evil?
(RealPlayer for Linux is actually a really good media player. Works well, plays everything, none of the quasi-spyware behaviour it was famous for on Windows. CULTURE SHOCK!)
Re: (Score:2)
Not sure I understand what they're doing. They're not being sued by anyone so they're going to court to sue to make sure no one sues them?
LOL, WUT?
Re:Whuh? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've heard of it before. It has to do when someone is threatening you with a lawsuit, but not following through. Rather than let that threat of a lawsuit affect your stock price, allowing the fear of it to affect your strategery, etc, it's best to just demand the court's rule and get it over with.
Essentially, it's calling in a game of poker. Only rather than letting the cards do the talking, you're letting the judge settle it.
Parent
That's what Red Hat did to SCO (Score:5, Informative)
When SCO was going around saying they were going to sue Linux users for vague, unspecified "IP" claims, Red Hat preemptively sued SCO, telling them, essentially, to put-up-or-shut-up about their claims.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=169 [groklaw.net] (from 2003).
Parent
Speaking as a once paying customer of Real (Score:5, Informative)
I bought RealJukebox and really liked it. The license said I had access to upgrades for the lifetime of the product. This purchase included the full version of RealPlayer too, with no adverts.
Then they changed the license terms within months (at the time they introduced OnePlayer) and said I had to repurchase at full price if I wanted to upgrade to OnePlayer. Oh, and they discontinued RealJukebox, and I wasn't allowed to update my copy of standalone realplayer either without paying the full licence fee again.
I wouldn't have minded a small upgrade fee I guess, although I would have grumbled, but I paid a fair bit for my original licence, and I was pissed off that it got junked so fast.
The chances of my paying for or using a RealNetworks product again are pretty much nonexistant.
Parent
yee-hah! (Score:2)
Phew, I can't decide whether this should get tagged as "yee-hah" or "Giddeeup".
Preemptive? (Score:2)
Real looks to be pulling a publicity stunt. I bet their original game play was to get the MPAA to sue them to attract attention to their terrible company to drive revenues up. The best response for the MPAA would be to ignore this with the expectation that nothing Real can do will save their company and to claim that there are individual pirates on the P2P networks who deserve more attention than Real's childishness.
Also, preemptive lawsuit? WTF?
Re:Preemptive? (Score:5, Insightful)
Real looks to be pulling a publicity stunt.
Possibly, or possibly they're trying to protect their own interests, much as Red Hat was when they preemptively sued SCO.
to attract attention to their terrible company
Ah yes, we all know that companies never change: IBM is still a hostile predator who refuses to acknowledge any software that wasn't developed in-house. They'd never in a million years consider supporting something as alien as Linux.
The nineties called and want their whine back (as well as their stale "decade X called and wants its Y back" joke). :)
I find it ironic when Windows users whine about Real (and in my experience, it's only Windows users that whine about Real). Everything they complain about in Real is among the reasons I stopped using ... er, actually, never really started using ... Windows. What's the difference between MS and Real? Real's main product is 90% open source, they actively support the community development efforts, their software has been bundled with Debian for years (at least, the 90% which meet the DFSG), they actively support Linux, and they seem to have made a massive effort to change their corporate culture since they hit rock-bottom in the early part of this decade (not unlike how IBM changed after bottoming out after the PS2 disaster). But some people can't forget the fact that they once saw an ad ten years ago, so Real will be evil forever. Dumbasses! :)
Parent
Sometimes you don't get a 2nd chance (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Sometimes you just don't get a second chance to make a first impression. Cruel, maybe, but it just means that some of us have a working memory. If I put my finger into the flame once as a kid, I don't try it again. I don't go thinking, "well, maybe fire changed in the meantime." And if I got burned by a company once, maybe I won't give them a second chance either. Deal with it. They shouldn't have been dumbasses in the first place, if they can't take the consquences later.
It's not just some discriminatio
Great! (Score:5, Informative)
*continues to use DVD Shrink [dvdshrink.org] for free anyway since it has no DRM*
Re:Great! (Score:5, Insightful)
*continues to use mencoder [mplayerhq.hu] since it is maintained and community developed*
Parent
Re:Great! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Great! (Score:5, Informative)
*cough*thepiratebay*cough*dvddecrypter*cough*anydvd*cough*magiciso*cough*
Ahem, excuse me. Had a bout of whooping cough there for a second...
Parent
Double Jeopardy (Score:2)
With the eventual outcome (Score:5, Funny)
Real: But... we sued them!
Judge: Look, I understand you're a startup company...
Real: We've been around forever!
Judge: ---Really? Never heard of you. $10 million or 40,000 innocent souls to the MPAA, to be paid by Friday.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Judge: ---Really? Never heard of you. $10 million or 40,000 innocent souls to the MPAA, to be paid by Friday.
10,000,000/40,000 = $250
I was wondering what the market value of an innocent soul was these days.
Listen carefully (Score:2)
You will not be hearing this from me again:
Real, you're awesome. Good luck!
The Deadly Courtroom (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The Deadly Courtroom (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's more that if you're 100% sure you're going to be sued anyway, you might as well be the one to take this to court yourself. It makes your filing the first impression in the case, I'm not sure if it gives you advantages to what court will hear it but maybe, and it conveys a sense of "Yes, we know what we're doing and it's not illegal" as opposed to most that get sued are squirming a little over being dragged to court. I don't think they ever expected the MPAA not to sue.
Parent
Not Your Rights (Score:3, Interesting)
This is not about "your rights". This is about lawyers making sure they and their counterparts are assured the driver's seat on this particular gravy train. There are plenty of other DVD copying programs out there being soundly ignored by MPAA and Real is already more reputable (in terms MPAA would accept) than the others. The only way the MPAA would be ready to reply same day with their own announcement is if they were already planning on doing so, and that requires knowing Real's intentions prior to their announcement. Much as I enjoy MPAA getting tweaked, I'm not going to credit Real with altruism when this amounts to nothing more than self-serving PR and income enhancement via docket padding.
A biggish company fighting MPAA is a Good Thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Their motivation is commercial, but RealNetworks is nevertheless defending (some aspects of) fair use. What is very important is that RealNetworks is saying that content owners do not get to make the final determination of what is and is not fair use.
The content owners have been overreaching on copyright by a large amount and for a long time now. I happen to think the current copyright law gives them far too much. But even saying "you only get to take what the law gives you and no more" would be an improvement on the present situation.
Some nice action in the commercial marketplace to push the grabby MPAA back into the spacious terrain that's been staked out for them is a Good Thing.
"Ladies And Gentlemen Of This Supposed Jury...." (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously though, all of these DRM schemes (Real, CSS itself, FairPlay, whatever) are attempts to tie the license to a copyrighted work to a specific device as opposed to a person . Therein lies the root of the entire problem.
It's not so much how the content is encrpted or what it works with or doesn't. That's the big red herring in all of these arguments. The important question is "what do customers actually buy?"
Are you buying a physical copy? That is the old model - go to the store, buy a disk, and it plays on all your devices. If it breaks or wears out, you buy another.
Are you buying a license to use the work instead? If so, the customer's rights are seperate from the physical copies. See, for example, site licenses for software, where you may have one CD and 100 licenses that can be moved from device to device as needed.
The whole idea behind these DRM schemes is an attempt to sell copies under the "old model" when the market is demanding the second, and is enabled by current technology such that it's now feasible for things to work that way. Indeed, it appears that the *AA are really trying to combine the worst aspects of both models to create a "third way" that really boils down to rent-seeking instead of sales. In other words, content is never purchased, but is merely rented.
The solution is a model where the works are licensed to an individual. The *AA could easily provide a "registration service" for specific works that could be referred to if a question as to licensing ever arose.
Copyright is not per se a bad thing at all, but the abuse of it to generate repeat sales of the same works to the same individual IS flat-out evil.
The Naked Emperor (Score:3, Interesting)
CSS encryption was broken so long ago by now that a lot of people don't even remember non-crackable movie DVDs. At best it's a low tripwire rather than an insurmountable barrier.
The content industry contends that Real's product, like Kaleidoscope's before them, removes even the tripwire for people who are too stupid to know how to Google. They further contend that there's this "delicate balance" of DRM that allows the studios to release their "incredibly valuable" content to the consumers in standard digital form and still sleep at night. Without keeping this nebulous veil that the works are protected against copying the studios would not release any movies to DVD any longer.
IT'S A LIE!
Studios make half their profits from any movie off of DVD sales. They can't afford to give them up. Blockbuster rentals didn't destroy them. Netflix hasn't destroyed them. deCSS hasn't destroyed them, and neither will Real. In short:
THE STUDIOS AREN'T GOING TO QUIT SELLING DVDs BECAUSE THEY CAN'T AFFORD TO!
So much for the big scary stories that your DVD player is about to become a paperweight. Ain't going to happen. Yeah they'll make a bit less than extracting every last penny, but they're not going to pull DVD sales because there is yet another hole in the armor of DRM.
In fact, DRM never was about "copy protection". Make a bit-by-bit copy of any movie DVD with all the DRM intact and the copy plays just like the original.
CSS DRM DOES NOT PREVENT EXACT COPIES FROM BEING MADE! IT ISN'T COPY PROTECTION!
Are we clear on that now? All DRM does is limit your ability on where and how you can play your lawfully purchased content. The content provider would like to sell you one copy to play on your television, then another full price copy to play on your computer, and then another full price copy to play on your game console, your game handheld, your portable DVD player... They'd love to sell you the same content over and over and over again (think vinyl, cassette, CD, iTunes).
The problem is that people now have more choices than ever (HDTV, PC, Gameboy, iPod) all at the same time and they want to Buy-Once-Play-Everywhere. Furthermore they don't see why they shouldn't be allowed to do this. And every moderate to wealthy household has a powerful engine in their own personal computer(s) capable of making all this happen. The movie industry's dream of pay-per-each-viewing, pay-per-device is a lovely dream not likely to ever be realized. Try that and there will be a revolution that will truly put them in their place.
So don't buy into the farce that only DRM makes it possible for us to have DVD movies. PROFITS are what make it possible for us to have DVD movies and those profits are still there. Enough people buy legal DVDs to keep the system running, and are likely to continue to do so.
So quit lying to us about the necessity of DRM, or how Real can't be allowed to do what is already being done. Try to make our lives simplier, not more complex, and quit trying to pick our pockets every moment. Times are hard enough right now as it is, and I don't see movie star and studio executive salaries declining as fast as my own yet.
Re:Ironic it will be, young padawan (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The naked celeb-titties in question belong to Marlon Brando.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It is a bit like politics. I know all the politicians have alterior motives. I know that they are just doing this because the publicity will help them. But, I would be foolish not to support them when the outcome of their publicity stunt would be in my favor.
Or this scenario:
Victim: *getting punched in the face by hoodlum A*
Hoodlum B: It is wrong to punch him in the face, I'm calling the cops.
Hoodlum A: You punched him last week and I didn't call the cops.
Victim: Yes, I agree, that would be hypocritical
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I wouldn't have guesses that you could preemptively sue someone who could sue you. Makes me see Jack Thompson from a different light, maybe he was just having fun with the legal system.
That's for example what happened between Linux and SCO in Germany with excellent effect.
SCO: We will sue all Linux users!
Linux: Sue or shut up.
Court: Sue or shut up. If you don't sue and repeat any claims, there will be a fine.
SCO: Mostly shuts up; from time to time SCO Germany messes up, links to files of SCO US, pays a fine.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)