The first round of RealNetworks vs. movie studios has gone to the movie companies. As we reported a while back, RealNetworks released its RealDVD software that enables users to make swift backups of their DVDs by downloading them on to the harddrive. The idea was to give users the ability to have their entire movie library on disk, which is just what people are asking for, but the major movie studios are claiming that this just makes it easier for people to steal their movies by copying rental movies or movies borrowed from a friend.
They dragged RealNetworks to court where it claimed that RealDVD is viciously bypassing the copy protection of the DVDs, something which RealNetworks denies.
According to federal judge Marilyn Hall Patel, best known for her work on the Napster case, MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) has solid evidence which has now rendered a temporary sale stop of RealDVD, confirmed by RealNetworks.
RealNetworks is forbidden to sell the software until the court has had the time to go through the application more thoroughly and decided whether it violates any copy protection laws. Right now it looks like RealDVD will not appear until next year, which is of course a great defeat for RealNetworks, missing out on the holiday shoppings. There is an evident risk that RealDVD will be stopped altogether, which is a big hit for RealNetworks and honest consumers that are just looking for a way to store movies on the computer.
