I was planning to weigh in on this week’s big digital rights story, the MPAA’s lawsuit against Real Networks for releasing its new RealDVD movie-copying software, but that was at the top of the week. This is the Internet. Everybody said everything that’s to be said on the matter in the first two days or hours or minutes of this, um, controversy. It’s hard to work up any Real passion on the subject anyway, as nobody really likes Real Networks (onetime online audio pioneers, now junky iTunes wannabe) or the MPAA (aka the movie police). But it all seems kinda simple to me: big, ravenous companies trying to expand/protect revenue streams, dressing it up as a copyright/artists’ rights issue. Ancient stuff.

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