RealNetworks against the MPAA

Link above goes to: Geek.com

Quote from the Source:

Real says Hollywood is a cartel, trying to kill DMCA Fair Use
May. 18, 2009 (8:11 am) By: Rick Hodgin

The ongoing legal battle between a group of Hollywood movie studios and RealNetworks stepped up a notch. RealNetworks filed a countersuit against the DVD Copy Control Association (CCA) and all major movie movie studios claiming abusive use of power....

The story here is amazing as it's hard to comprehend exactly why there is such a battle in this area, and I like the article I'm linking to, as it puzzles over the same issue and ultimately offers some conspiracy theories.

I know, I know, people tend to dismiss conspiracies, but what if they DO exist?

I have a personal interest here myself as I produced an idea I call Digital Media Equipment Self-Encryption or DMESE for short, and introduced it on one of my other blogs near the end of January 2007.

I gave it away as open source and have since discussed it on that blog and on this one, including a post which addresses a concern I've seen mentioned in press reports about the ongoing court battle, which I called completing DMESE.

Now that post was back in early July 2007, and handles the issue by having the system ask for the DVD that was copied, again, after some period of time like 30 days to try and ensure that the DVD was purchased by the user and not borrowed.

So nearly two years ago I had a solution out on the web that answers the objection I've seen reported as the main plank of the case against RealNetworks with its copying software, which I should mention has a component that is shared with my DMESE which is that the copy is encrypted, which is where the "self-encryption" part of DMESE comes into the equation.

I'm not saying that RealNetworks used DMESE (as if they did they'd need to attribute the idea to me as that's what open source means, free, but say where you got it from) and it's a simple enough notion that I don't think that is an issue.

But consider a massive court battle costing millions of dollars and involving such massive use of resources for a problem I feel confident I solved, almost two years ago.