I didn’t take long for the lawsuits to start flying. Real preemptively sued the Hollywood studios asking for a declaratory judgment that their software was legal. Then the Hollywood sued Real.

The Studios managed to get an injunction against the sale of RealDVD which remains in effect as of today. This doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense to me as there’s plenty of software that does the same thing. Most of it is a lot worse (from the MPAA’s point of view) in that it removes the css copy protection. Add to this that Kaleidescape has won a lawsuit allowing them to copy DVDs with their software.

There are those who feel the lawsuit has nothing to do with piracy. I tend to fall into this group because I don’t see where RealDVD contributes to piracy. In fact, it may prevent piracy if it makes it easier for people to view the DVDs they’re buying. It certainly doesn’t make sense that someone would use this to rip a DVD as a way to bit torrent it. There are easier ways to do that.

The only thing I’ve heard that makes any sense is they are afraid people will rent DVDs and rip them. But even that makes little sense. DVDs are big and would require a lot of disk space if your renting to build a library. People doing this would probably do a little research and find a better method,

The reason for the lawsuit is probably summed up best in a Computer Buyer story that quotes the EFF’s senior staff attorney Fred von Lohmann:

DRM systems like the Content Scramble System (CSS) used on DVDs are not principally about preventing piracy. Rather, DRM is the legal ‘hook’ that forces technology companies to enter into licence agreements before they build products that can play movies (Hollywood lawyers candidly admit this “hook IP” strategy). Those licence agreements, in turn, define what the devices can and can’t do, thereby protecting Hollywood business models from disruptive innovation.

It’s all about control and Real was a big enough target that they had to get swatted down. That hasn’t stopped others from selling software that will do the same thing as RealDVD.

EA added some draconian DRM to the game, but even if your willing to live with the restrictions it appears there’s still a problem getting the game to work in some cases. Originally EA had designed the DRM to check-in with the DRM servers every 10-days for validation. This meant when the servers went away your game would stop working, in effect you rented the game. They relented and the DRM only checks in during install/first launch and patches and online access. But a game built around “community” and online features could be annoying if it checks DRM every time you use some features. EA seem to be under the assumption that DRM always works.

The low customer ratings at Amazon may be the result of a coordinated effort to raise awareness, rather than actual DRM problems preventing the game from working. Still, the people who buy at Amazon are probably the type who only care about DRM when it affects them. They’re going to go to Amazon and see the low ratings. Will they see what looks like problems and decide not to buy?

Perhaps EA should take a page from StarDock’s playbook:

What we think people who publish games and music need to remember is this: The goal is not to eliminate piracy. The goal is to increase sales.  People who are dedicated to stealing your product will steal it.

The focus should be making sure it’s more convenient to buy your product than to steal it. It can be a delicate balance. But as the story linked below shows, too many publishers are obsessed at eliminating piracy rather than reducing sales lost to piracy.

The DRM also limits you to three installations.

In general if I buy something with DRM I consider it a rental and a throw away item. At $50 and the type of game intended to be fun for the family, as opposed to hard-core gamers, and played again and again over a long time the DRM seems counter-productive.

Next up is RealDVD from the folks who bring us Real Player. They’re also the ones who cracked Apple’s FairPlay DRM so their RealPlayer music store files could play on the iPod. At least until Apple disabled their files. This time they’ve tweaked the MPAA by creating software that rips a DVD to disk. The files still have their DRM and Real apparently adds another level of DRM so the files can only be played through their player and on a limited number of PCs. You also need to buy a RealDVD license for each PC. Ars Technica reports the current price of RealDVD as $30 currently with an eventual price of $50. There’s a free 30-day trial available.

I grew to hate Real long ago with older version of their Real Player software so I won’t even be giving the trial a try. But I would think anybody who wants DVDs copied to disk has already figured out how to do it. The limitation of requiring the ripped files to be played in the Real software further limits the usefullness of this software.

It appears some vendors still haven’t learned that DRM creates pirates out of people who’d be willing to pay for their product.