AfterDawn: News

RealNetworks settles with Hollywood studios over RealDVD ripping software

RealNetworks has announced that they have settled their outstanding lawsuits with the major Hollywood studios over their Real DVD ripping software, effectively killing the product off after making just 2700 sales.

Additionally, Real will pay $4.5 million to pay off the legal costs of the litigation.

"We are pleased to put this litigation behind us," adds Bob Kimball, president and acting CEO for Real. "This is another step toward fulfilling our commitment to simplify our company and focus on our core businesses. Until this dispute, Real had always enjoyed a productive working relationship with Hollywood. With this litigation resolved, I hope that in the future we can find mutually beneficial ways to use Real technology to bring Hollywood's great work to consumers."

The settlement also terms a permanent injunction that will block RealDVD and similar technologies forever from sale in the US or abroad.



The $30 USD software application allowed users to make a copy of their DVDs and it play it back on their PCs, allowing for, what Real thought, were legal backups. Clearly, Hollywood did not agree, despite the fact that Real's backups also included DRM to stop sharing of the backups.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 3 Mar 2010 18:17

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• 5 comments

• ZippyDSM

  So let me get this right.... a company that bought the CSS license to legally rip without removing or bypassing the protection and even added another layer of protection is not legal because they could not fight the racket of the media maffia?
  
  W T F AmeriCa WTF??!?!?!

  3.3.2010 19:13 #1

• KillerBug

  Not quite...the Real DRM would have been harder to crack than the protection built into a dvd.
  
  I almost have to applaud the studios for this one; this was a very dumb software that was souly intended to take the money of people who don't know anything about computers. If Hollywood had not sued Real, then the users would have.

  3.3.2010 22:40 #2

• ZippyDSM

  Originally posted by KillerBug: Not quite...the Real DRM would have been harder to crack than the protection built into a dvd.
  
  I almost have to applaud the studios for this one; this was a very dumb software that was souly intended to take the money of people who don't know anything about computers. If Hollywood had not sued Real, then the users would have.Not really as its legal software to legal make a backup without breaking the DVD's protection and thus breaking the law, its merely a software option like Itunes.

  4.3.2010 11:29 #3

• KillerBug

  Quote:Originally posted by KillerBug: Not quite...the Real DRM would have been harder to crack than the protection built into a dvd.
  
  I almost have to applaud the studios for this one; this was a very dumb software that was souly intended to take the money of people who don't know anything about computers. If Hollywood had not sued Real, then the users would have.Not really as its legal software to legal make a backup without breaking the DVD's protection and thus breaking the law, its merely a software option like Itunes.Itunes breaks the protection built into audio cds (yes, they are protected...very poorly), and replaces it with a much more intrusive DRM...real does the same thing, but without removing the first protection.
  
  Considering that DVDShrink does the same thing, but removes all DRM and protection, and it does it for free, I can only consider Real to be scamware.

  5.3.2010 00:54 #4

• ZippyDSM

  Quote:Quote:Originally posted by KillerBug: Not quite...the Real DRM would have been harder to crack than the protection built into a dvd.
  
  I almost have to applaud the studios for this one; this was a very dumb software that was souly intended to take the money of people who don't know anything about computers. If Hollywood had not sued Real, then the users would have.Not really as its legal software to legal make a backup without breaking the DVD's protection and thus breaking the law, its merely a software option like Itunes.Itunes breaks the protection built into audio cds (yes, they are protected...very poorly), and replaces it with a much more intrusive DRM...real does the same thing, but without removing the first protection.
  
  Considering that DVDShrink does the same thing, but removes all DRM and protection, and it does it for free, I can only consider Real to be scamware.Ya but the industry is not pushing hard to protect CDs, since they managed to get anti copy circumvention crap in the DMCA they are hog wild to protect DVDs, also you can't sell or distribute ripping software in the US. Tho its randomly enforced.

  5.3.2010 13:05 #5