Monday, October 6, 2008

RealDVD Goes Offline

RealNetworks DVD ripping and playback service, RealDVD, has been pulled offline due to a ruling in lawsuit against the firm. According to a notice posted on the RealDVD web site, the service--which allows users to copy DVDs for playback on their PCs--is "temporarily unavailable" due to "recent legal action." The service, which is run by RealNetworks, only launched its service on September 8th, and just last week was sued, and sued a group of Hollywood studios over the service. The ruling comes after the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the group which represents Hollywood in copyright infringement and other cases, filed a suit against RealNetworks saying that the firm had violated terms of its license to the CSS decoding algorithm for DVDs, and also for violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).