Hollywood in a showdown with RealNetworks over DVD piracy tool

(25 April 2009 7:45 pm)

MUMBAI: What Hollywood calls as "rent, rip and return" and contends that it's one of the biggest technological threats to the film industry's annual $20 billion DVD market is a software that allows one to copy a film without paying for it.

Last Friday, lawyers of the film industry in Hollywood urged a federal judge to bar RealNetworks Inc. from selling software that allows consumers to copy their DVDs to computer hard drives, arguing that the Seattle-based company's product was an illegal pirating tool.

The lawyers argued that the software violates a federal law known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that makes software and other tools that enable digital piracy illegal. They also contended that shoppers will widely condone such illegal behavior if RealNetworks' product is allowed in the market.

The company, however, argued that the contract it signed with the DVD Copy Control Association, which equips DVD player manufacturers with the keys to unscrambling DVDs, allows RealDVD because the software doesn't alter or remove anti-piracy encryption like illicit software that is easily obtained for free online.

RealNetworks contends that its product legally fills the growing consumer demand to convert their DVDs to digital form for convenient storage and viewing.