RealNetworks Surrenders, Hollywood Loses

Hollywood is doomed if they do, and doomed if they don't when it comes to cracking down on DVD pirates.

RealNetworks has decided to resolve the legal challenges brought against it by Hollywood, and permanently discontinue its RealDVD software. As part of the settlement, RealNetworks will also pay $4.5 million in legal fees to the parties that brought the lawsuit against the company including six Hollywood studios, Viacom and the DVD Copy control association. RealNetworks will also reimburse the 2700 customers who purchased the RealDVD software since its launch in 2008. The settlement ends a legal battle of almost 17 months that started just one day after RealNetworks made RealDVD available for sale in late 2008.

The strange thing about the RealDVD case is that the software was relatively conscientious about concerns over copy protection and piracy. Unlike other software alternatives, RealDVD preserved the copy protection software embedded on the disc, and any copies you made using RealDVD were locked onto the hard drive you saved them on. This made it impossible to convert RealDVD content into different video formats such as DVI, AVI or MPEG-4 and then shares those files on the Internet

Despite these copy protection steps, however, RealDVD still made content producers nervous. The irony is by defeating RealNetworks Hollywood has lost one possible solution to its real battle: the need to protect intellectual property while still giving you the freedom to consume purchased content as you see fit. Instead, the entertainment industry blew it, and movie and television content is no safer today, than it was yesterday.

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RealNetworks has decided to resolve the legal challenges brought against it by Hollywood, and permanently discontinue its RealDVD software. As part of the settlement, RealNetworks will also pay $4.5 million in legal fees to the parties that brought the lawsuit against the company including six Hollywood studios, Viacom and the DVD Copy control association. RealNetworks will also reimburse the 2700 customers who purchased the RealDVD software since its launch in 2008. The settlement ends a legal battle of almost 17 months that started just one day after RealNetworks made RealDVD available for sale in late 2008.

The strange thing about the RealDVD case is that the software was relatively conscientious about concerns over copy protection and piracy. Unlike other software alternatives, RealDVD preserved the copy protection software embedded on the disc, and any copies you made using RealDVD were locked onto the hard drive you saved them on. This made it impossible to convert RealDVD content into different video formats such as DVI, AVI or MPEG-4 and then shares those files on the Internet

Despite these copy protection steps, however, RealDVD still made content producers nervous. The irony is by defeating RealNetworks Hollywood has lost one possible solution to its real battle: the need to protect intellectual property while still giving you the freedom to consume purchased content as you see fit. Instead, the entertainment industry blew it, and movie and television content is no safer today, than it was yesterday.

Can't Stop the Ripping

RealDVD may be gone, but there are dozens of alternatives for DVD copying software (known as ripping), and almost all of them are less respectful of encryption methods than RealDVD. Hollywood has pursued some DVD ripping software creators, like the makers of the freeware DVD Shrink, but that hasn't worked either. Even though the official DVD Shrink site is gone, the software lives on thanks to mirror sites like these, making it almost impossible to stop people from using the software.

There Be Pirates

Two file sharing directories, The Pirate Bay and Mininova, were forced to go legitimate last year, but that hasn't stopped file sharers from continuing on without them. The fact is, even if Hollywood was able to shut down every torrent site, you could still use several mainstream search engines to find torrents just by plugging in the search term 'filetype:torrent' as part of your query.

Piracy has also moved onto the Web, with countless pirate streaming sites just a few clicks away thanks to streaming platforms like Megavideo, zSHARE, wisevid and many others.

DVDs are Dinosaurs

Netflix recently inked a deal with Warner Bros. that would bring more content to its streaming service, but new movie releases wouldn't come to Netflix until 28 days after their DVD launch date. The video rental and streaming service was widely criticized for this move, and the deal also shows that Hollywood is fearful of losing its cash cow: DVD sales. But with technology expanding at a rapid pace this is no time for fear, and DVDs are already a losing proposition for Hollywood.