RealDVD Sales Suspended In Tinseltown Showdown

A federal judge has issued a temporary restraining order against RealNetworks, forcing it to halt sales of its RealDVD software, an application that lets consumers rip and save their DVD movies to their hard drive.

The order comes in the wake of a lawsuit filed by major Hollywood studios claiming the software violates copyright protection.

According to RealNetworks' Web site, RealDVD is currently unavailable for purchase.

"Due to recent legal action taken by the Hollywood movie studios against us, RealDVD is temporarily unavailable. Rest assured, we will continue to work diligently to provide you with software that allows you to make a legal copy of your DVDs for your own use," RealNetworks said.

Announced last month, RealDVD is a PC application that lets consumers save their DVDs to their hard drive to watch later without lugging around the physical discs. Users can rip their DVD collection to their computers without removing or altering the CSS encryption, making it legal to copy DVDs without infringing on copy protection and copyright laws. Essentially, RealDVD works like this: A user launches the software, inserts a DVD into a PC's DVD drive and hits "save." The application does the rest.

Last week RealNetworks took a preemptive strike to try and protect itself from a lawsuit by major Hollywood studios that the company said had threatened to sue the software maker over copyright protection and infringement issues. The company filed an action for a declaratory judgment in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California against DVD Copy Control Association (DVD CCA), Disney Enterprises, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox Film, NBC Universal, Warner Bros. Entertainment and Viacom. The lawsuit asks the court to rule that RealDVD software fully complies with the DVD Copy Control Association's license agreement.

That same day, Hollywood battled back, with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) filing a suit of its own asking a federal court in Los Angeles for a temporary restraining order to stop the sales of RealDVD.

The film industry contends that RealDVD software violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by illegally bypassing copyright protection to protect DVDs against illegal duplication, theft and copyright infringement. The MPAA contends in its lawsuit that RealDVD lets users "rent, rip and return" DVDs. Basically, the MPAA said users can rent a DVD, copy it using the software, burn illegal copies and return the DVD. One MPAA representative said RealDVD should be called "StealDVD."

The case has been transferred from the Central District of California in Los Angeles to the Northern District of California, which is San Francisco or Oakland. The case was transferred under the "first to file" rule, since Real had filed its declaratory judgment in the Northern District Court before the MPAA filed its suit.

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