Hollywood’s movie studios sue RealNetworks Inc. by Martina Janeckova

On Tuesday 30 September, Hollywood’s six major movie studios (Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures, Sony Corp.'s Sony Pictures, News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox, General Electric Co.'s Universal, The Walt Disney Co.'s Disney studio, and Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros.) sued RealNetworks Inc. to prevent it from selling DVD copying software. If consumers stop buying DVDs and instead copy rental DVDs, the studios can lose $15 billion in the U. S. this year, according to Adams Media Research. The studios argued “why, he or she may ask, ‘should I pay $18.50 to purchase a DVD when I can rent it for $3.25 and make a permanent copy?’” The plaintiffs claim that the RealDVD program illegally bypasses the copyright protection built into DVDs. For $30, consumers can buy RealDVD and use it to copy DVDs to computers or portable hard drives, though the program prevents them from transferring the files to other users. However Bob Kimball, general counsel for RealNetworks said that “This is not a product that enables Internet piracy, because the software locks the copy to the hard drive where it is copied and to the program it was copied with. He added that “copying one’s personal collection of DVDs is considered to “fair use” allowed by law.” But Kimball admitted that the company discourages using the program to rip rental DVDs, but he said “there’s nothing to prevent consumers from doing that.” The Hollywood’s studios proclaimed that the Federal Millennium Copyright Act makes it illegal to deceive technology that prevents copying without the explicit permission of the copyright holders and they asked RealNetworks Inc. not to launch the product.

by Martina Janeckova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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edited by Beata Biskova