RealNetworks this week made it clear that it's not giving up its fight for RealDVD, its software for making backup copies of DVDs on PC hard drives. The company filed an appeal in an attempt to overturn a preliminary injunction issued in August by a federal judge who said the company's legal interpretations would lead to "absurd" results and amounted to a "failed coverup."

The company argues that the lower court made numerous legal errors in siding with the DVD Copy Control Association and major movie studios (which allege that RealDVD illegally circumvents the Content Scramble System and violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act). But more than that, RealNetworks contends that the potential harmful effects of the RealDVD technology are being blown out of proportion.

Read on for an excerpt from the appeal.

The design of the Real VD Products corresponds to RealNetworks' reasonable understanding of the Agreement. The Products save a CSS-encrypted copy of a DVD to a hard drive, where the movie is in fact more secure than it was on the original DVD. Movies saved by the RealDVD Products are rendered unplayable if removed or copied from the hard drive to which they are originally saved. Likewise, saved movies cannot be transcoded into other digital formats, compressed, distributed over a network, or uploaded to the Internet in playable form.

In addition to these technical safeguards, RealNetworks has taken steps to preclude consumers from using the RealDVD Products to save DVDs that they do not own. The end-user license for the Vegas (software) version of RealDVD obligates consumers to use RealDVD in a legal fashion, and to only save movies that the consumer owns. Both versions of the RealDVD Products warn users not to save a movie that they do not own. The marketing material for the RealDVD Products contained similar messaging.

While it may be possible, despite these measures, for consumers to use the RealDVD Products to make a copy of a DVD they do not own, there is no evidence in the record -- expert or otherwise -- demonstrating that users wishing to engage in such activity are likely to use the RealDVD Products to do so, rather han one of the hundreds of versions of "ripping" software designed expressly for that purpose (and often available for free on teh Internet.) Ripping software is neither hard to find nor difficult to use, and it puts no restrictions on how the digital copy of a DVD can be viewed or distributed.

Of course, one argument from the studios is that people will use the software to copy to their hard drives movies that they rent from the corner store or borrow from their friends. Should be interesting to see how the case plays out in the coming months.

Read the full appeal here: PDF, 68 pages.

[Via AllThingsD.com]