Media Wonk

Link This | Email this | Comments (1)

DVD copying gets Real - September 8, 2008

Well, this should be fun. Citing Kaleidescape Inc.’s victory last year in its long-running battle with the DVD Copy Control Assn. over the right to build and market a home-media server that allows users to transfer their DVDs to the unit’s internal hard drive, RealNetworks has announced plans to introduce a $30 piece of software that does pretty much the same thing for anyone with a lap-top computer. RealDVD, as the product will be called, is “a compelling and very responsible product that gives consumers a way to do something they have always wanted to do,” like make backup copies of favorite discs and take movies with them on their laptops when they travel, RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser told the LATimes. “If you look at the functionality of the product, we have put in significant barriers so people don't just take this and put it on peer-to-peer networks. I think we've been really respectful of the legitimate interests of rights holders.”

Anyone want to give odds on rights holders seeing it that way? Didn’t think so.

The announcement is bound to set off all sorts of gnashing of teeth in Hollywood and within the DVD-CCA, all of which Media Wonk looks forward to reporting on in coming days. For now, I’ll just mention two items that could make this one a game-changer:

1) Although the studios hated the idea of Kaleidescape users copying their DVDs, they never actually sued the company for copyright infringement or for circumventing copy-protection. Instead, they were content to let DVD-CCA bring charges that, as a manufacturer (or reseller) of DVD drives, Kaleidescape violated the terms of the license governing decryption of CSS-encoded content, which DVD-CCA claimed prohibits the making of “persistent” copies of CSS content that can be played back without the original disc in the tray. The judge in the case found that the CSS-license contract doesn’t actually say that so Kaleidescape was not in breach.

Details of RealDVD are still sketchy. But RealNetworks says it provides consumers with a “legal way” to copy their DVDs. Presumably, that means the software, like Kaleidescape’s media servers, doesn’t circumvent CSS either, but decrypts the content using a licensed “software decryption module” before copying it to a hard drive. In other words: functionally identical to the Kaleidescape system.

Unlike Kaleidescape’s $10,000 home media servers, however, RealDVD is a $30 piece of software. Instead of a relative handful of rich gadget freaks (many of whom, incidentally, work in Hollywood) and a few high-end manufacturers, you’re now talking about potentially millions of consumers copying DVDs.

If RealDVD is able to slip through the same contractual loophole as Kaleidescape, the studios’ only legal option if they want to stop it would be to sue Real for enabling or inducing copyright infringement. But that would almost certainly bring on the very showdown the studios sought to avoid by going after Kaleidescape on the CSS license: Asking a court to decide whether consumers have a fair-use right to copy their own DVDs for space-shifting or format-shifting purposes.

2) According to the initial reports, RealDVD is not capable of determining whether the DVD being space-shifted is one the user owns, or one that came from Netflix. Doing nothing, therefore, could have the effect of all-but legalizing rent, rip and return.

And once again, you’re not talking about a few folks with $10,000 media servers but pretty much anyone with thirty bucks and a Netflix account.

More to come.
[Content Protection & Management]  [Digital Copyright]  [Discs]  [DRM]  [Legal]  [Platforms & Formats]   LEAVE A COMMENT