The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), representing the major Hollywood studios, filed a lawsuit alleging RealNetworks violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The lawyers at the MPAA are always hard at work looking for ways to disenfranchise their most loyal consumers.
This challenge is reminiscent of the lawsuit successfully defeated by Kaleidescape earlier this year. Real obtained a DVD-CCA license and have been offering RealDVD software with this license allowing users to make copies of their DVDs, without breaking the CSS encryption, and storing them on their computer's hard drive.
The MPAA is alleging Real had not obtained specific authorization from the copyright holders to make copies with their software. They are attempting to bypass the DVD-CCA issue by cutting them out of the equation. The DCMA prevents companies or end-users from circumventing copy protection, but Real and Kaleidescape insist their DVD-CCA license allows them to play backed-up DVDs without breaking the encryption.
The outcome of this case would most certainly affect all hard drive based DVD server systems, including Escient, Life|ware, Niveus, Kaleidescape, et al.