Along with the 1996 Telecom Act, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was one of the worst legacies of the Clinton years. Unlike the Defense of Marriage Act or the faux Welfare Reform Act, both the Telecom Act and the DMCA pretended to be forward looking bills that would usher us into a more prosperous 21st Century.

Rotten at the root, the DMCA continues to bear poison fruit. The latest is the ruling by the infotainment industrial complex' favorite judge Marylin Patel (the judge who killed Napster and inadvertantly the music industry in 2000) to ban Real DVD -- an innocuous technology that allows consumers to make personal copies of the DVDs they have purchased.

From PC World:

RealNetworks' RealDVD was handed a devastating blow yesterday as U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel realdvd copyright in a case pitting the two against each other regarding the right to copy films onto one's hard drive. She granted a preliminary injunction against sale of RealDVD, pending a trial over copyright infringement. A cluster of Hollywood honchos, including Paramount, Sony, Universal Studios, and Walt Disney filed suit against RealDVD back in September. Now RealDVD's site is a headstone: "RealDVD is Currently Unavailable."
...

The argument stems from the Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998. Circumventing encryption technology on digital media was made illegal by the DMCA. According to Patel's decision, RealDVD broke through a DVD's Content Scramble System code in order to transfer movies onto hard drives.

But RealDVD was very stringent with its copying program. The basic package allowed for only a single digital copy to be placed on your hard drive. After paying extra licensing fees, you could transfer the digital copy onto as many as five other hard drives. Disc-based burning was never an option.

Meanwhile, programs such as the VLC Media Player flaunt the law and provide software that allows for real-time copying. So why is the MPAA hard up for RealDVD and not these other products? It seems to me that the MPAA has chosen a battle against RealDVD to set an example but is perhaps ignorant of the proliferation of DVD-ripping programs available.
...
It's sad that RealDVD, with its sophisticated and lawful approach to DVD-copying, had to swallow the wrath of the MPAA. It's also clear that the DMCA needs to be updated to reflect the changes in media distribution 11 years later. It's perfectly legal to rip music from a CD and upload it onto an iPod for personal use; why can't a person do the same with their own copies of movies? The assumption is that everyone using a program such as RealDVD is a criminal bent on ripping as many Netflix movies as possible, rather than a law-abiding citizen who simply wants to watch flicks on the go. For an organization that supposedly has its finger on the pulse of moviegoers, the MPAA strikes me as horribly distrustful and curmudgeonly in its approach to modern times.

You're probably going, so what? Let's talk about health care. Not so fast.

There's more...

This sort of backwards-ass thinking on the part of the media industrialists really bugs me. Jerome

Recently the MPAA found its newest target in its ongoing and futile attempt to prevent legitimate and legal advances in DVD home viewing.

RealDVD is a computer program that lets views save their DVDs (movies, TV shows, and home movies) to their PCs or laptops.

But this is not just another DVD-ripping program. The DVDs that you save will play only on your computer with the License Key purchased, it does not break the encryption code on the DVD, and you cannot burn disks from the DVD upload that you make.

This is not simply another Handbrake or Jack the Ripper, two DVD ripping programs that curiously have not received the ire of the MPAA. Instead RealDVD is a program that allows users to back up their DVDs like they have been able to do with their music for many years, watch DVDs anywhere without having to lug around a cumbersome case (especially useful when traveling), and ensures that DVDs are not lost if disks get scratched or worn out.

The program does nothing to harm the film industry. RealDVD users still must purchase the DVDs to view them, and are not able to rip the movies for profit themselves.

Naturally there are concerns about the interactions between RealDVD and services like Netflix and Blockbuster online. As state previously, RealDVD is not interested in providing an avenue for people to illegal copy and share DVDs. They have spoken often about how eager they are to work with the film industry to install protections on DVDs rented from companies like Netflix and Blockbuster in order to ensure they cannot be backed up using their program.

And how does the film industry react to this program? Does it embrace it as an avenue for their continued survival to ensure they don't go the way of the recording industry?

Of course not.

Instead the major Hollywood studios banded together, sought legal action to block the distribution of RealDVD, and were ultimately successful in temporarily shutting down the distribution of the program. A Federal Judge will hear the case and the status of the preliminary injunction will be decided sometime in the next few weeks.

The MPAA is tight rope walking the same dangerous line that the RIAA did in attempting to use copyright laws to control information. In doing so the RIAA managed to kill their own industry. If the MPAA continues down this same path we will be writing the same stories about them as we are about the downfall of the RIAA.

Because the fact of the matter is RealDVD does not circumvent technology meant to prevent illegal copying of DVDs, but rather it has received rave reviews for its stringent protections against such actions.

The Hollywood film studios are selfishly preventing consumers from being able to back up their purchases. With no basis in law for such actions and absolutely no intent of wrong doing from the makers of RealDVD, the ultimate endgame of this charade by the MPAA will be blocking a huge benefit to consumers whose dollars are already being competed for left and right.

Tell me if enraging consumers and blatantly attempting to stifle innovation, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation points out as the real reason for the film industry's outrage in this October article, by blocking a completely legal product is really the best idea in these times, if ever at all?