Motion Picture Association of America

Score one for Hollywood. RealNetworks agreed this week to settle lawsuits with major movie and TV studios for its RealDVD product, which allows users to copy DVDs onto hard drives.

As part of the settlement, RealNetworks will pay the studios $4.5 million to cover legal costs. In its announcement, RealNetworks said all parties have agreed to the "terms of a permanent injunction that will prohibit RealNetworks from distributing or supporting RealDVD or any other technology that enables the duplication of copyrighted content protected by the Content Scramble System, ArccOS or RipGuard."

Score one for Hollywood. RealNetworks agreed this week to settle lawsuits with major movie and TV studios for its RealDVD product, which allows users to copy DVDs onto hard drives.

As part of the settlement, RealNetworks will pay the studios $4.5 million to cover legal costs. In its announcement, RealNetworks said all parties have agree to the "terms of a permanent injunction that will prohibit RealNetworks from distributing or supporting RealDVD or any other technology that enables the duplication of copyrighted content protected by the Content Scramble System, ArccOS or RipGuard."

Late last year, RealNetworks released RealDVD, which allowed users to make a personal backup copy of their DVDs. The software was only available for a few days before the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) filed a copyright-infringement suit, alleging that RealDVD violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by allowing consumers to bypass DVD content-scrambling systems.

Asian pirates are producing counterfeit copies of copyrighted Blu-ray Disc videos. A recent raid on counterfeiters in southern China has prompted the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to warn consumers about counterfeit movies.

Pirates are using software to create imitation Blu-ray disks with a format called AVCHD, which allows both high-definition and standard-definition recording. The format is used in tapeless camcorders that record onto DVD and Blu-ray disks. For high definition, all major variations are supported, including 720p, 1080i and 1080p.

Intellectual-property offenders face tougher penalties now that President Bush has signed into law the PRO-IP Act with greater penalties for piracy. The president signed the bill Monday.

The Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2007 passed both the House and Senate. The law gives government agencies tools to gather evidence for prosecution of intellectual-property crimes, provides funds to the Department of Justice to better enforce IP-related crimes, and boosts collaboration between agencies seeking to stop piracy.

RealNetworks Inc. said Monday it had temporarily stopped distributing its DVD copying software, RealDVD, at a federal judge's request in a copyright case brought by Hollywood studios.

"We temporarily suspended distribution of the product until tomorrow," said Seattle-based RealNetworks' spokesman Ryan Luckin.

The site, made inactive Friday, now tells visitors: "Rest assured, we will continue to work diligently to provide you with software that allows you to make a legal copy of your DVDs for your own use."

The federal courts in California will have their hands full with the brewing battle over RealNetworks' newly released software, RealDVD -- a program the company says is designed to enable "consumers to securely store, manage and play their DVDs on their computers."

In what the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) is calling a significant victory for the major Hollywood studios, a federal judge in Los Angeles has issued a $110 million judgment against file-sharing Web site TorrentSpy for infringing on the copyrights for thousands of popular movies and television shows.

The worldwide motion-picture industry, including foreign and domestic producers,