What Exactly Does Shutting Down RealDVD Solve?

It's been a bad week for RealNetworks, whose RealDVD software product has been effectively shut down because of its perceived violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

It's the latest chapter in a legal battle between RealNetworks and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) that began nearly a year ago and has a number of implications about digital rights management and copyright infringement. RealNetworks, in fact, might just find itself in the middle of one of the more interesting digital piracy and rights management discussions ever.

The story so far: RealDVD, which is a DVD-copying product, was on sale for only a few days in September 2008 before a collection of Hollywood studios filed suit and a temporary injunction against RealDVD was handed down.

The product itself, which is a software package, allows users to copy DVDs to their computer hard drives and leave CSS encryption intact. RealNetworks has argued that RealDVD, which sold for $29.99, provides an easy way for users to make back-up copies of DVDs they've already paid for.

Neither the MPAA nor the court saw it that way, however, and Judge Marilyn Patel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Tuesday struck what's probably the death blow for RealDVD, ruling that RealDVD violates copyrights and granting a preliminary injunction.

On Tuesday, both parties made brief statements, with MPAA Chairman and CEO Dan Glickman saying in a statement that "Judge Patel's ruling affirms what we have known all along: RealNetworks took a license to build a DVD player and made an illegal DVD copier." In a separate statement, RealNetworks said it was "disappointed" in the injunction and will continue to review its options.

The crux of the matter is language in the 11-year-old DMCA, which makes illegal the circumventing of encryption technology on digital media. Patel's 58-page court decision suggests RealDVD violates the DMCA because it breaks a DVD's CSS.

But as has been well documented since last September, RealDVD allows users to make only five digital copies of any one disc, locks those copies onto hard drives, and doesn't alter the discs digital encryption codes. It also doesn't allow for digital burning, meaning users can't exactly turn their computers into DVD-copying factories. RealNetworks even went so far as to obtain a license from the DVD Copy Control Association (CCA) for RealDVD.

Besides, the extended scrutiny of RealDVD as free-for-all theft system -- the MPAA memorably commented last fall that the service should be renamed "StealDVD" -- makes the MPAA seem more ignorant than crusading. A quick Internet search reveals an entire galaxy of DVD-ripper programs that don't exactly apply the same level of copying restrictions to their software that RealNetworks' software does.

The MPAA is still fighting a twenty-first century problem with a twentieth century mindset, just as other recording industry bigwigs are doing with their ongoing battles in the music business, shutting down BitTorrent sites like The Pirate Bay and prosecuting college students and working mothers for millions of dollars.

Maybe Judge Patel is doing the same thing -- she did, after all, preside over the now-famous Napster decision nine years ago -- and maybe, just maybe, the digital world's changed a bit since 1998 and the DCMA could use a rewrite.