Real Settles Lawsuits, Will Stop Selling RealDVD 139
angry tapir writes "RealNetworks has agreed to pay $4.5 million and permanently stop selling its RealDVD software as part of a legal settlement with six Hollywood movie studios. The lawsuits date back to 2008 and Slashdot has previously discussed them. RealDVD is an application that lets people make copies of their DVDs."
So that's ... (Score:2, Informative)
... one less competitor for SlySoft [slysoft.com]. They must be partying on Antiqua.
Re:Oh no, we're screwed! (Score:3, Informative)
What I am doing isn't costing the movie industry any "lost sales."
That's where you are incorrect. Now, before you flame me, consider my same position. In high school I paid good money for a (licensed) MST3K Pod People VHS tape. It has since been watched to shreds. It did not help that I lent it to people in college so their filthy whore VHS players could gunk it up. I had no way to duplicate it digitally but had I done that initially, I would have.
... after paying ~$40/set of four DVDs and now being on volume XVI, I guarantee you that I will not be moving from DVD MST3K any time soon. Thank god we have the technology to do this.
Many years later I have many (licensed) MST3K DVDs. Some from Rhino some from The Shout Factory. My ritual is similar to yours except I play them once in my computer with DVD decrypter and then they are safely shelved (hopefully) never to be played again. Later I use handbrake for a similar setup that you have going on but instead to play them on my XBox over a network.
Now, in the case of Pod People, I have paid to license it twice in a very short amount of time. You may argue it was for quality yet I have no problem with VHS quality (and some DVDs seem to be VHS quality). Should the industry fail to entice you or I with Blu Ray and beyond, our neatly digitally backed up copies will suffice us for quite sometime
Back to the story, DVD Decrypter has been defunct since 2005 (forced to by legal issues) so I'm not getting anymore updates. And it doesn't work on all of the newest big studio name DVDs. K9Copy is alive and well, I believe and Handbrake works well if you don't need an ISO. But the real problem is that once RealDVD goes down, where do you think the attention will go next? Probably towards putting K9Copy and Handbrake with DVD Decrypter.
Re:What is the tehnical issue here? (Score:5, Informative)
It's simple, the CSS key is stored in normally unreadable/unwritable areas of the disk, so a straight copy misses the key and it won't play. However, if you decrypt it and burn the decrypted version to a new disk, it will play fine.
Re:Oh no, we're screwed! (Score:3, Informative)
mac the ripper is still available and updated. it copies off the disc to a video_ts folder with the encryption and noops removed. (and region coding if necessary)
Since the transcoding process takes awhile, I usually MTR all the discs in a box at once to hard drive, and queue them all up in handbrake. Let that run 2-3 days on its own with out having to feed it a disc every hour or so and it's done. (requires a fair chunk of free HD space for all those video_ts folders)
Re:Oh no, we're screwed! (Score:4, Informative)
If all he did was make a copy of a DVD, I beg to differ. DMCA Section 1201:
Re:dd if=/dev/dvd of=dvd.iso (Score:3, Informative)
No, CSS isn't to prevent you from copying the disk at all. You can quite easily copy a CSS protected disk, and the copy will still be encrypted of course, but it will play fine. (and Mplayer, VLC, etc. will break CSS in real time and play from an encrypted VOB/ISO/Physical Disc).
The only reason some DVDs are hard to rip recently is because they have some *other* protection that *does* prevent you from copying them easily. Usually they have the sectors set up in an odd way, so that if you try to play the video straight through it works, but if you try to copy the whole disk instead, it will result in like 9000 gigabytes of data. (i.e. they have a lot of extra sectors listed on files that aren't used or something like that).
CSS isn't copy protection, it's *use* protection. You can't convert the video into another format if it's CSS encrypted. You can't make a PSP or iPod version, f.e., if you can't decrypt it. You also can't make a small DivX or whatever to send on p2p networks. (Of course you could just upload the whole CSSed ISO, which anyone can play...)
MTR availability has changed. (Score:1, Informative)
MTR is now being sold rather than given away for free. And why not one might ask? I have no problem with them charging for it (even if they do use other people's libraries inside) It's just that I won't pay for it.
Given the legal grey area I'm uncomfortable with having a credit card transfer to MTR on my records, or giving MTR anyway to definitively identify me. If they get rolled in court then there will likely be a list of all the people with their ripper given to the MPAA. So it's not worth it to me to pay from MTR. There is an old one kicking around out there but more and more DVDs, especially the Disney DVDs for my kids, that I can't back up with it. Ironic because those are the only ones I want to back up to kid-proof them. I seldom watch any DVDs more than once aside from kid movies so I only buy kid movies.