VCAM members trying to stay abreast of the latest on copyright in the digital age will be interested in knowing Warner Brothers, Walt Disney Company and Sony recently decided to sue RealNetworks to prevent them from selling software that enables people to make digital copies of their DVD’s.
This past Tuesday Brad Stone from the New York Times reported:
RealNetworks, the company behind RealPlayer software and the Rhapsody music subscription service, said RealDVD gives users the freedom to do things like make backup copies of favorite discs or take movies along on a laptop while traveling. It has argued that RealDVD is now legal because of a favorable decision last year in a case against Kaleidescape, a Silicon Valley-based manufacturer of high-end media servers.
“We are disappointed that the movie industry is following in the footsteps of the music industry and trying to shut down advances in technology, rather than embracing changes that provide consumers with more value and flexibility for their purchases,” RealNetworks said in a statement Tuesday.
Stone continues to say the studios argue RealDVD violates the 1998 Digital Millenium Copyright Act because the software circumvents the encryption added to DVD’s to prevent copying.
“RealDVD should be called StealDVD,” Greg Goeckner, executive vice president and general counsel for the Motion Picture Association of America, said. “RealNetworks knows its product violates the law, and undermines the hard-won trust that has been growing between America’s moviemakers and the technology community.”
It’s important to note that last Tuesday RealNetworks decided to countersue the studios arguing RealDVD adheres to the Millenium Copyright Act because the digital files produced by the software contain their own encryption designed to prevent unlawful online file sharing.
October 3rd, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Ironically, Real Networks includes its own odious DRM system in its software, limiting what users can do with the content that they own. The MPAA is actually upset that Real is stripping away the movie studios’ bad DRM and replacing it with Real Networks’ bad DRM.
Also, in their statement to the press, MPAA lawyers asked to not be identified by name. These are the lawyers, hired by the movie industry to represent the movie industry’s interests, refusing to be identified by name in the press. Wha?
Cory Doctorow wrote:
Truly, this is a new low in chickenshittery that has me scraping my jaw off my chest. These lawyers aren’t deep-throat whistle-blowers sneaking information out of their employers’ filing cabinets: they’re the official spokespeople for the firm. And they get anonymity?
So what happens in the future — after the MPAA gets its ass handed to it by the court — if we want to argue that the MPAA’s lawyers have a long history of going around saying that software is “totally illegal”? Do the MPAA get to deny it, because no one can name the spokesperson who said it?
And why on earth would the journalists honor such a request? “Unnamed MPAA lawyer says stupid thing” fails one of the important Ws of reporting: Who said it?