[JURIST] The US District Court for the Northern District of California [official website] on Tuesday enjoined [opinion, PDF] the technology company RealNetworks [corporate website] from selling its DVD copying software, RealDVD. Judge Marilyn Patel held that the RealDVD software violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) [text] and rejected RealNetwork's fair use defense. Patel did not not entirely dismiss the notion that a fair use defense may prevail in other scenarios, notably individuals making backup copies of DVDs for personal use:

So while it may well be fair use for an individual consumer to store a backup copy of a personally-owned DVD on that individual's computer, a federal law has nonetheless made it illegal to manufacture or traffic in a device or tool that permits a consumer to make such copies. Importantly, such tools are unable to distinguish between personal use copies of personally-owned DVDs and other sorts of copies for other purposes—commercial, personal, or otherwise.