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"Legal copying" meme taking hold - September 11, 2008

As a technical matter, RealNetworks' RealDVD does nothing you couldn't already do using AnyDVD or one of the many other DVD rippers widely available online. In fact as many commentators have pointed out, it does less: The copy it makes is tethered to a particular hard drive or designated storage device and cannot be recopied or reformatted. By virtue of Real's market profile and familiarity among consumers, however, RealDVD is doing something AnyDVD could never do: planting the idea firmly in mainstream conciousness that copying encrypted DVDs is legal, at least the ones you own.

Here's a headline from today's edition of USA Today, the virtual definition of a mainstream outlet:

RealDVD lets you load up your laptop with movies; Software allows people to copy their discs legally.

And here's the lede of Edward C. Baig's review of RealDVD:

You're schlepping the kids on a family trip and will do anything to keep them occupied. For better or worse, many parents stick them in front of a video.

Were it only that easy. The discs the youngsters want to watch are too often lost, scratched or broken; somehow your smallest child hasn't yet distinguished a DVD from a Frisbee. Besides, you are trying to pack light.

This week at the Demo tech conference in San Diego, RealNetworks unveiled a neat solution for just such a family scenario, or for the business traveler who loves movies. It's called RealDVD, and the basic idea is appealing: You can copy, organize and play your DVD movies and TV shows on a laptop while leaving the physical discs at home.

Except that as any copyright lawyer will tell you, there's nothing in copyright law that explicitly gives you the right to copy a DVD, even if you own it. Nor has any court expressly held that you such a right. And the studios have gone out of their way over the years to try to make sure no court ever does. If there's going to be copying of DVDs, the studios want it to be at their own sufferance, not as a unilateral right of DVD owners.

But try explaining that to someone whose only knowledge of the issue comes from what they read in the paper. It says right there: Software allows people to copy their discs legally.

Also under today's dateline, PC Magazine, published by Ziff Davis, a major, publicly traded media company, used RealDVD as a peg for a story headlined: 7 Tools for Ripping Your DVDs.

While the piece includes a perfunctory caveat that, "PC Magazine does not condone any form of piracy," it goes on to note that DVD rippers are "handy for backing up your purchased DVD collection and freeing up your movies so that you can watch them on the device of your choosing."

Among the products highlighted: DVD Decrypter ("This legendary DVD ripper was taken down in 2005, but you can still find downloadable copies of it floating around the Web"); DVDShrink, HandBrake and MacTheRipper.

No wonder the studios are having trouble figuring out how to respond.
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