By BRAD STONE
Published: September 30, 2008

Six major movie studios sued RealNetworks, the Seattle-based digital media company, on Tuesday over its new $30 software program that allows people to make digital copies of their DVDs.

As the opening warning on every DVD indicates, Hollywood has bitterly opposed such copying. The studios have argued that it threatens their emerging business of digital downloads and can motivate buyers to rent, copy and return DVDs instead of buying them.

RealNetworks, the company behind RealPlayer software and the Rhapsody music subscription service, said RealDVD gives users the freedom to do things like make backup copies of favorite discs or take movies along on a laptop while traveling. It has argued that RealDVD is now legal because of a favorable decision last year in a case against Kaleidescape, a Silicon Valley-based manufacturer of high-end media servers.

RealNetworks also said that RealDVD conforms to Hollywood’s rules on DVD protection by encrypting the digital copies, which prevents unlawful online file sharing.

“We are disappointed that the movie industry is following in the footsteps of the music industry and trying to shut down advances in technology, rather than embracing changes that provide consumers with more value and flexibility for their purchases,” RealNetworks said in a statement Tuesday.

For their part, the studios argued in legal filings that the software violates the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act because it bypasses the anticopying mechanism built into DVDs.

“RealDVD should be called StealDVD,” Greg Goeckner, executive vice president and general counsel for the Motion Picture Association of America, said. “RealNetworks knows its product violates the law, and undermines the hard-won trust that has been growing between America’s moviemakers and the technology community.”

Paramount Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal Studios, Warner Brothers, Columbia Pictures, the Walt Disney Company and Sony are suing RealNetworks in United States District Court in Los Angeles, seeking an injunction that would prevent the company from selling the software.

Also on Tuesday, RealNetworks countersued the studios in federal court in San Francisco, asking a judge to find that the program does not violate Hollywood’s DVD license.

Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/01/technology/01film.html?ref=business

The real question is. Why are they ganging up on this particular piece of software, when there is a bunch of other similar typed software out there on there net?

Does this piece of software have abilities that the others don't? Or is it something else?

They just want to make examples of them by suing them. I can't see any reason for the MPAA to win but anything is possible. The idea is to force them to go through the courts and stick them with a ton of legal fees. Even if you win, you still lose.

They just want to make examples of them by suing them. This ^

Didn't they go through this same bullshit with VHS?

Is this pretty much what happened to DVD X Copy Platinum?