RealNetworks had created a software, RealDVD, that can make a digital copy of a DVD. But unlike DVD rip software, RealDVD created digital copies that could still be protected by encryption. The purpose of RealDVD was merely to give the owners of the DVD more flexibility in how they wanted store their media--whether in disc or digital form.
However, RealNetworks recently settled with several movie studios in a case that would have allowed RealDVD to use the same kind of encryption technology on their digital copies as the kind that is currently used on disc-form DVDs. As a result, RealDVD will never be sold again, and thanks to the precedent of this case, similar software may never be made again.
"RealNetworks must have calculated that as a company with a large war chest, it could succeed where others didn't dare to tread. As soon as it released RealDVD, it preemptively sued the DCCA and several studios to establish that it had the right to use CSS in the way RealDVD did. The studios and DCCA sued in return, and got software sales halted. The studios won in August 2009; Real appealed.
The settlement on Monday clears all the suits by RealNetworks agreeing to never sell the software again, refund the money to about 2,700 RealDVD purchasers, disable an associated metadata service, and pay $4.5 million to several movie studios, its Rhapsody partner Viacom, and the DCCA to cover legal and other expenses.
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I can understand why they did it, but it resembles the Google Book Settlement, a massive effort by Google to get a special judicial and settlement right to not be sued for selling works to which the owner cannot be found and to which it does not have assigned rights (so-called orphan works)."
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