Where's Elvis? -- Dueling DVD Copying Lawsuits

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com>
Date: October 1, 2008 6:00:18 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Cc: lauren () vortex com
Subject: Where's Elvis? -- Dueling DVD Copying Lawsuits



                   Where's Elvis? -- Dueling DVD Copying Lawsuits

                     http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000438.html


Greetings.  Here we go again.  A pair of dueling lawsuits between
the motion picture industry and Rob Glaser's RealNetworks have
materialized, this time surrounding Real's release of a DVD copying
program -- "RealDVD" -- that includes some unilateral restrictions
on created copies.

I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not a fan of DVD piracy.  Nor am I an
expert on the intricacies of the legal differences between DVD
piracy and fair use copying -- clearly an evolving area of law.

But one aspect of all this seems obvious to me.  Elvis has already
left the building!

Unless our goal is the full employment of itinerant attorneys, these
sorts of lawsuits -- on both sides -- tend mainly to divert
resources from the broader range of intellectual property issues
that truly deserve our attention.

DVD ripping and copying is impossible to stop at this late stage.
Here's 1.65 million reasons why in a single URL:

  http://www.google.com/search?q=dvddecrypter

The DVD Decrypter program is -- obviously -- ubiquitous.  While its
development stopped sometime back, it's still perfectly capable of
extracting the contents of virtually any commercial DVD to disk, and
in conjunction with other widely available and free programs create
perfect DVD copies.

Is DVD Decrypter legal to use?  As I suggested above, the laws in
this area are in flux, and I don't consider myself qualified to
render an opinion on this for any given situation.

But the point is that DVD Decrypter, and other programs like it
*do exist*.  They're not going to vanish and will always be
easily available, lawsuits notwithstanding.  That's simply the
reality of the situation, whether we choose to like it or not.
Anyone who wants to is easily capable of copying DVDs without paying
a single dime to RealNetworks.

The current round of DVD lawsuits is something of a battle between
phantoms, like attempting to alter history without the benefit of
Mr. Peabody's Wayback machine.

It's time to move on.  Elvis isn't coming back for another encore.

--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren () vortex com or lauren () pfir org
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
  - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, NNSquad
  - Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com




-------------------------------------------
Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com