RealNetworks to Introduce a DVD Copier

This is BS I thought that they had finally given up with DRM for CD's and DVD's. We as customers don't like it I like to be able to do what ever I want with my purchased media (except giving it away). I feel sorry for the idiot that are going to buy this just because they don't know about other software like slysoft. Why are we going backwards?

Darksages, there is a common misunderstanding about buying a DVD, that people believe they have bought "the film", and can therefore do anything with it. In fact, what you have paid for, is the right to view the film, from that one purchased disk, unless otherwise stated. Viewing alone. you are not allowed to transfer it to any other medium, or lend it, or do anything to it, expcept watch it. This was also true of VHS tapes that you paid money for - however, as there was no real copy protection on VHS, most people didn't realise this. "they" certainly haven't given up on DRM for DVDs. True, the copy protection they use can be broken fairly easily, IF YOU KNOW HOW. But, the reason it's worked as a deterrent, and the reason so few copies of DVDs float about (compared to, for example, CDs, or cassette tapes) is because they AVERAGE user doesn't know how to bypass this protection. For example, my mother, or father, or grandmother, who are very tech-illiterate, know how to rip a CD to hard disk, and they also know how to make cds of that ripped music. So do schoolkids, and so, copies of music spread like wildfire. DVDs on the other hand, baffle anybody with only a passing/casual interest in copying them. They stick it in the drive, find they can't copy it, and go do something else instead. This 'casual' piracy accounts for a much larger percentage of piracy than most people realise, and the DRM on DVDs has made it almost non-existent.

I meant, viewing alone, as in, "only viewing", not viewing in solitary confinement! oops! haha!

@ lotsa, I've always found dorm rules to be strange. We have a "TV licence" in the uk, which basically ays for the BBC, and paying it is compulsory for anyone who owns a TV set, or (technically) TV tuner for a pc etc. (a radio, however, requires no such licence?). However, if yo have several televisions in the same household, you only need the one TV licence. If you're in a dorm, or 'diggs', or any form of rented accomodation howver, each room needs a seperate licence.

"The VHS tapes were "licensed for home viewing only" and could not be showed to the dorm students, particularly when we were charging 50 cents for a bag of popcorn." It doesn't matter if you charge for popcorn - the license is not for public exhibition. That's why movie theatres pay thousands for their copies, and why movie rental stores pay hundreds for their 30 minute looping reels to play on TV's in the store. Hell, the movie/TV industry even get mad if you have a house party to watch that big PPV event.

I think its time for informed users instead of settling for the way laws are written to challenge them. I get sick of government overreaching their authority into people's lives. Come on, college kids can't watch movie together in their dorms? Public exhibition? Definitely time for changing the laws. This kind of thing has been happening for years but we haven't actually seen the MPAA enforce this. I am very much against the DCMA. I was very disappointed with President Clinton and the Dems for allowing this to pass. I just hope it gets truely challenged to be changed in the future. To me, its corporate welfare. The type that I hate from both Democrats and Republicans.