I’ve said it 1000 times before, but let me preface this post by saying it again. I am 100% against piracy. Piracy is theft no matter how you try to justify it. Pure an simple. You are stealing the creative work of others that someone has invested small fortunes in and there is no excuse you can give that makes it “ok” to do it. That being said, the Motion Picture Association of America have made jackasses out of themselves by how they’ve chosen over the years to try to enforce anti-piracy laws. Prosecuting teenage kids, going after parents, treating everyone like they’re criminals without ever actually addressing the real core reasons for piracy.
One of the things I’ve really HATED is how the MPAA has been fighting for years to stop you and me… law abiding citizens and costumers… from legally making backups of the DVDs we LEGALLY PURCHASE. DVD are fragile things, and if I slap down money to buy your stupid product, I want to be able to safe keep it and back it up. I’m not a pirate!!! If I was I wouldn’t have bought your damn DVD in the first place.
Anyway, a court battle is raging right now in this fight between the Hollywood studios and RealNetworks, a company that has a piece of software to help you backup your DVDs to your computer. Yahoo News gives us this:
If RealNetworks wins, it could establish a beachhead for software that transfers movies from DVDs to hard drives, opening the door for many companies to sell devices that can store and organize movies from DVDs. RealNetworks began selling “RealDVD” for $30 at the end of September, but only a few thousand copies were out the door before it wound up in court. Judge Patel temporarily halted sales in October.
Now the judge is considering a preliminary injunction against the Seattle-based software company. RealNetworks lawyer Len Cunningham argued that the studios had their own products which provide for backups, called digitalcopy. “They have aggressively marketed it,” he said. “The threat (to Hollywood) is for legitimate competition.” The judge interjected: “They have the copyright.” Cunningham argued that DVD owners have a “fair use” right to make copies of their own DVDs. But Reginald Steer of the DVD group said the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 had overtaken that argument.
RealNetworks says the software can be used with one hard drive and only five devices, such as laptops or televisions. That would prevent it from getting on the Internet or being handed off from one friend to another, they say.
The last paragraph is the part I don’t get. If RealNetworks has made this software with built in protection to stop people from sharing the files with other people… what the hell is the problem here? This is frigging ridiculous.
If the MPAA want to fight piracy, then they should be working with companies like RealNetworks to make the software available… not fight against it. They should be making owning movies easier and easier rather than fighting to take away our rights to protect and back up the things we buy from them. Taking away that ability just makes it more tempting to pirate stuff. Frigging ignorant morons.
