Hollywood's power players have attacked the recently released Real Networks software which makes an exact copy of DVDs on a hard drive. The lawsuit, which alleges that RealDVD violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, was filed today in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles and asks for damages and injunctive relief against its maker, RealNetworks.

Real Networks unveiled in early September its RealDVD software, which is able to make an exact copy of a copy-protected DVD and then add another DRM layer for easing industry concerns about piracy. It looks like it wasn't enough for the greedy and paranoid movie industry which doesn't seem to get it that times are changing.

Meanwhile, RealNetworks filed its own preemptive suit on Tuesday against the Motion Picture Association of America Inc. (MPAA) arguing that its software was protected under the "fair use" statutes of U.S. copyright law.

The ripped DVDs can be played back using Real's software on any computer running Microsoft Windows. Only one computer can have a copy of a specific DVD, and to transfer the ripped DVD to other computers, users have to buy additional licenses of the software, which come at a discount.

The whole idea is to give users a more convenient way of storing and playing their collection of DVDs, without having to actually carry around the physical discs. The downside is that RealDVD makes exact copies of the discs, without adding newer, more powerful compression, which means that each DVD will take at least 4GB for single layer and up to 8GB for double layer discs.

Real Networks offers a fully functional, anonymous demo for 30 days, which enables users to try the software before they pay the introductory price of $29.99, though that will rise to $49.99 later on.

DVDs are protected by the Content Scramble System (CSS), a weak, proprietary 40-bit stream cipher algorithm introduced in 1996 and compromised soon after its release. Freeware software, considered illegal by the industry, can remove Macrovision, Content Scrambling System (CSS), region codes, and disabled user operations (UOPs) from protected discs, in reasonable time.