US Court temporarily prohibits RealDVD sales

You know how RealNetworks confidently launched a commercial DVD ripping program and then went and pre-emptively sued a bunch of movie studios to demonstrate in court that the software doesn't infringe on copyrights? Yeah, the studios sued back. And while the courts figure out how to deal with the whole mess, RealNetworks has been ordered to stop selling the RealDVD software.

NewTeeVee reports that this is just a temporary shutdown until Tuesday. The purpose is to give the judge time to review the details of the case.

Meanwhile, there are still plenty of applications that will let you rip DVDs for free, although few, if any, keep a DVD's CSS encryption intact the way that RealDVD does. So if you're a big fan of DRM, especially the heavy-handed kind that will only let you watch a ripped movie on a single computer, you might want to wait until this legal battle is worked out. If you prefer being able to watch movies your own way, you might want to check out Handbrake or Fair Use Wizard.

Tags: commercial, dvd-ripper, lawsuit, realdvd, realnetworks