RealNetworks is the company behind the RealPlayer, that small piece of software criticized many times, but that helped to make Internet  what it is today. It wasn't only on of the first media players but was one on the first of its kind to able to stream media over the Internet, first audio and then video. Most of the long time users remember how frustrating was trying to watch anything in this player fill with pop-ups and very annoying spy-ware, but at the end it helped to shape the web and show what capabilities that a truly multimedia Internet had. Pages like Youtube, and the hundred of streaming services are proud descendants of this system.

RealDVD

RealNetworks was also behind RealDVD, possibly the last chance to have a legal way to copy and save our own DVDs. The software allowed any user to save a copy of a DVD movie they own.

Soon after this software was released a lawsuit from different Hollywood studies forced to stop selling the software and focusing all their attention and money in the trials.

Its important to clarify that RealDVD is not a DVD ripper: those programs use many methods to strip the Content Scramble System (CSS), in other words the DRM. But RealDVD followed the legal system. It get a license from the DVD Copy Control Association, which controls CSS on behalf of the movie industry. RealDVD decrypted the DVD, copied it, and then locked back again. So we have as a result a copy of a DVD with the DRM intact.

RealDVD didn't break the DRM, that is illegal and well protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). In this way RealDVD had the chance to be the only legitimate way to make a copy of a DVD.

The lawsuit was of course based under the claims that the software allows anyone to save a movie they do not legally own, or copying renting movies.

After a year and a half, RealNetworks lose the lawsuit and settle to pay the major studios $4.5 million and refund the money to about 2,700 RealDVD purchasers,

An BoingBoing article explains how this lawsuit could signify that no other company will try to face the big studios to defend a legal way of copy DVDs. RealNetworks had the money and the experience and they lost.

The conclusion of Boingboing's Glenn Fleishman is this:

"That leads to the conclusion that in order to make legal copies, you are obliged to be a pirate. Media companies failure to accommodate the notion that people may have legitimate purposes for making digital copies for their own use dooms them to eternal piracy."

Other Options

But if this is the last legit system to make copies of your own movies, there are still some other softwares that will let you make copies, not ripping the DVDs, but actually making a complete copy of your DVD.

Apple has its own application for making images of DVDs. Its located in the "Disk Utility" and is really easy to use.

In Windows there are several ways to do this.

• Virtual Clone Drive

• Daemon Tools

• Virtual CD

In Linux (Ubuntu) is even simpler. You just need to type in the terminal

 cat /dev/scd0 > /home/YOURNAME/test.iso

Where /dev/scd0 is the device name for your drive. And the second part it the desired path and filename.