Courts put DVD ripping on shaky ground

Two court decisions send a message that both DVD ripping and DVD ripping hardware/software is illegal under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The first blow to fair use came on August 11th when a San Francisco judge granted an injunction against RealNetworks RealDVD software. RealDVD allowed users to rip DVDs to their hard drives.

Note: There's plenty of other software that's available to do the job!

Then on August 12th a California appeals court reversed an earlier court order allowing Kaleidescapeto develop a video jukebox home movie server.

Good news for Hollywood, but a harsh blow for fair use. Sure, piracy is a bad thing. And I agree that bootleg DVDs are also evil. Problem is, I can't see anything wrong with giving users an easy to use mechanism to allow them to store/organize/play back their DVD library. Rather than protect against piracy, what I see the legal system being used to do is stifle innovation and take away consumer's fair use rights.

It's amazing how the focus has shifted from combating piracy to taking as much money as possible off customers. Well, I guess they were the ones willing to pay for the content once, so why not make them pay over and over again.