You don’t really own your DVDs. If you watch them quietly at home, you may never realise that the 12cm plastic discs on your shelves are actually shiny little outposts of Hollywood, fortified by a shadowy legion of regulations. Break any of them – by showing a film at a youth club, lending discs to a B&B guest or simply transferring a movie to your iPhone – and you risk the full weight of the studios’ legal muscle.Just ask RealNetworks. Last year, this Seattle-based company developed a piece of software called RealDVD, which enables consumers to make a digital copy of their DVDs, as iTunes or Windows Media Player do with music CDs. Unlike those programs, however, RealDVD leaves the original copy protection intact, restricts playback of the digital file and doesn’t let users burn fresh discs.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/may/21/real-networks-courtoom-trial-dvds
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