Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Hollywood Scores Win Over RealNetworks RealDVD
A group of Hollywood studios has scored a win over RealNetworks today, as the firm settled a lawsuit which targeted a DVD copying and ripping service called RealDVD, which RealNetworks was attempting to launch into the market. According to RealNetworks, it is entirely dropping the service, and will pay $4.5M in costs and fees associated with the litigation, after agreeing to settle the dispute over its software. Six major Hollywood movie studios, Viacom, and the DVD Copy Control Association had filed suit in September of 2008 over RealDVD, which was launched that same month to help consumers copy DVDs to their hard drive. RealNetworks said that as part of the suit, it has agreed to a permanent injjunction that will prohibit RealNetworks from distributing or supporting RealDVD or any other technology that enables the duplication of copyrighted content protected by the Content Scramble System (CSS), ARccOS, or RipGuard. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) had filed its suit in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, forcing the RealDVD service offline in October of 2008. RealNetworks said it would be refunding purchase price of its product to approximately 2,700 existing RealDVD customers, and also halt the metadata service that provides DVD cover art and movie information to RealDVD users.