James Delahunty
24 Apr 2009 23:37
In September of last year, RealNetworks began selling a new product called RealDVD for $30. The product could copy retail DVD content onto one hard drive and up to five devices. However, only a few thousand sales or so were made before a federal Judge blocked the sale of the program at Hollywood's request. Now RealDVD is being tested in court, with lawyers for the Hollywood studios saying RealNetworks violated copyright law.
"In the end, this case will be about how RealNetworks tries to take money that is not theirs," argued Bart Williams for the movie companies. He also commented at one point that code being used by RealNetworks was sourced from Ukrainian hackers, which RealNetworks has denied exists in the product.
RealNetworks fought back however, with lawyer Len Cunningham arguing that the studios had their own products which provide for backups, called digitalcopy. "They have aggressively marketed it," he said. "The threat (to Hollywood) is for legitimate competition." U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel interjected: "They have the copyright."
Cunningham went on to argue that DVD owners have a fair use right to make backup copies of discs they have bought. Reginald Steer of the DVD Copy Control Association (DVD-CCA) rejected his point, saying the Digital Millennium Copyright Act had overtaken this argument.