MPAA Gets Public Kicked Out Of Courtroom for RealDVD Trial

[mkrishnan]

http://government.zdnet.com/?p=4702

In an unusual development, Judge Marilyn Patel kicked out the public from the RealDVD injunction hearing, saying that details of DVD encryption were trade secrets that need to be protected. Real and Cnet objected strenuously, as News.com reports.

“I find that this does meet the requirements for a trade secret,” Patel said. “We’re going to protect what needs to be protected. I’m ordering everyone not signed off on a confidentiality agreement to leave the courtroom.”

“The MPAA is trying to seal proprietary specifications,” said DVD-CCA attorney Reginald Steer. He added: “This is critical to our presentation.”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Cnet complained that MPAA was disingenuous in the extreme in obtaining a closure at the last minute.

“[The judge] implied that we should have filed a motion preemptively,” EFF’s Corynne McSherry said. “If that’s true, the public shouldn’t have to go to court to make the courtroom stay open…Presumably the plaintiffs had known for months that they were planning to close this hearing. This is not the right way to do it.”

CNET News contacted the MPAA in advance and asked if the group would attempt to close the courtroom on Friday; the MPAA replied earlier this week it would not seek to do so.

CBS Interactive - News.com and ZDNet’s parent - said it is considering legal options to re-open the courtroom.

Good luck with that.

Disappointing. This kind of behavior makes the MPAA look much like the RIAA -- completely disinterested in the welfare or happiness of their consumers. How much money from CD sales has gone into the RIAA's witchhunt? How much money from movie tickets and DVD sales goes into this kind of shenaniganry?

 

[r.j.s]

I think both the RIAA and the MPAA are a waste of money for everyone. They've become the mafia, bullying everyone around in order to keep themselves around.

 

[mkrishnan]

Yeah... I really had hoped that Apple's pushing iTunes into the digital video market would really shake the market up and improve things, but I really don't think they have succeeded to date in this. iTunes is okay, and Unbox is okay, but but everything is really still very limited. If I want to rent a movie and then watch it on my laptop or iPhone on a trip, there's no reasonable option -- Apple's rental time is prohibitive, renting / ripping / deleting a DVD is a significant inconvenience, and other services don't work on my devices without network access.

 

[Abstract]

If I want to rent a movie and then watch it on my laptop or iPhone on a trip, there's no reasonable option -- Apple's rental time is prohibitive, renting / ripping / deleting a DVD is a significant inconvenience......

 

[r.j.s]

To keep it quasi-legal.

 

[mkrishnan]

To keep it quasi-legal.

Yeah, exactly... it's at least a good faith effort.

 

[Consultant]

Haha. Perhaps they didn't realize the encryption is already cracked.

How else can people back up or rip their own purchased DVD?

 

[mkrishnan]

Haha. Perhaps they didn't realize the encryption is already cracked.

How else can people back up or rip their own purchased DVD?

That part is somewhat comical. Presumably they don't consider programs like Handbrake and MTR to have enough widespread appeal (and they're probably harder to go after). I've never used EasyDVD or even seen it. Is it far simpler than other programs?

 

[Iscariot]

This is an area of considerable conflict for me.

On one hand, I went to art school and I worked in the commercial art field for a time. I am familiar with the necessity and importance of copyright law, the rights it grants creators, and the protection it affords. I also truly love cinema, I follow directors, writers, actors and even choreographers in fairly extensive detail. I want to reward the creative minds in Hollywood with my business. This is an exchange I enjoy.

On the other hand, I find the tactics of the MPAA to be reprehensible. The ridiculous hoops one must leap through to simply watch purchased media on a different device betrays a total lack of interest in the customer experience or customer satisfaction. DRM is an abomination, a guilty-until-proven-innocent form of copyright. I am okay with paying $15 for a movie, I am not okay with paying $15 to license the right to watch a movie only on a limited set of devices after clawing through enough plastic to poison a cubic metre of ocean water, or paying $15 to download a video to have it be restricted to the point that getting full use out of it will constitute a legal infraction anyways.