Court prohibits RealDVD

Court prohibits RealDVD

RealNetworks will stop selling RealDVD, a software to copy DVDs to the computer, which Hollywood allegedly violated copyright laws.

Following several lawsuits brought by six of the largest American film studios, the courts on Wednesday issued a decision preventing the company from distributing the film. software or any similar products and condemns it to pay the studios the 4.5 million dollars (3.3 million euros) spent on legal expenses.

The company will also have to return about $ 2,700 to customers who purchased RealDVD, adds the Associated Press.

According to information provided by various international media, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and Real Networks reached a prior agreement whose terms the judge’s sentence confirms.

Cited by Cnet, the MPAA spokesman, was satisfied with the outcome of the process, which in his opinion confirms what they advocated from the beginning: «it is illegal to circumvent the copyright protection technologies included in the DVDs and designed to protect films from theft «.

In the process, which has been going on since 2008, studios like Disney and Sony, maintain that RealDVD is an illegal tool for piracy that would make people stop buying DVDs when they could simply rent them (for a much lower cost ), copy them to your computer and return them.

For its part, Real claimed that the software allowed only one copy of the DVD to be made and that consumers have the right to make backups of their DVDs for personal use, just as they do with the music they buy, and that what they sought was to offer users the means to do what they were legally entitled to do.

But the argument did not convince the court, which already at a preliminary stage, had «frozen» the distribution of the software and scheduled a trial for a later stage.