At the start of a planned long hearing on whether to impose a pre...

digital copies could themselves be copied. A lawyer for Real, Leo Cunningham, told U.S. District Judge Marilyn Patel in San Francisco that the copies can be played but not copied themselves. “The safest time in the life of a DVD” would be after copying by RealDVD, because unbroken AES-128 encryption is added, said Cunningham’s colleague Don Scott. The most vulnerable time, he said, is when the disc comes out of the packaging, protected only by the original DVD CSS technology, broken years ago. RealDVD, as a download or embedded in a CE device, would allow the owner to copy a DVD onto a hard drive and play the copy on as many as five registered devices. A lawyer for the Hollywood studios, Bart Williams, said RealDVD does enable viral copying, because owners of Real’s technology could pass around a borrowed or rented disc indefinitely for copying. The studios and the DVD CSS’s licensor, the DVD Copy Control Association, contend that marketing RealDVD would violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s ban on circumventing copy-control technology and the terms of the CSS license agreement. The studios argue that Real set out to deprive them of their right to control copying of their works. The DVD CCA contends that RealDVD clearly violates the purpose and terms of the licensing agreement and the specifications it incorporates. RealNetworks’ position is that it has abided by the agreement, whose anti-copying provisions, it says, are narrower than the association portrays. It argues that RealDVD wouldn’t violate the DMCA, either, and the studios are actually trying to use copyright as leverage to illegitimately exclude competitors like Real from a separate, new market of enabling consumers to exercise fair use by managing their DVD collections and making backup copies. The sale of RealDVD has been blocked by a temporary restraining order since October. Patel has set aside Tuesday and Wednesday for the rest of the injunction hearing.