What this issue boils down to is “Fair Use” and what is it,what are consumers allowed to do under it, and most importantly who decides both what it is and gets to police it.
The courts first broached this with VCRs back in the ‘70’s. When VCRs came out the media company’s were afraid the television industry would die,, Last I looked it wasn’t dead, in fact its doing quite well..
The music industry sang he same song when cds and computers came out, granted hey’re not doing as well as they’d like, but they’re still dong ok, and finding ways to make money in different formats.

The courts need to make a definite definition of what “fair Use ” is and what are its boundaries, taking in to account the realities of technology.  Ie DVD copying, And losing media, or media dose get ruined for whatever reason,  Thats not even counting being able to play bought and paid for media on any platform, it Apple, MS, or set-top box, or computer, or portable dvd player.

  If consumers can make a couple of everyday copies to get lost or ruined by the kids or other issues, then they will be more inclined to buy a expensive HD dvd and invest in a movie at they can preserve and make copies of as they get runined or lost.
The only one I’ve seen even trying to address this is Disney, I have seen where certain movies as a package deal buy the Blue-Ray and get a regualr dvd copy of the movie as a set. Thus allowing you have a HD copy for the home threather, and a dvd copy to play in the kids room or portable player..
This approach makes sense. With is marking tool you might even sell more HD dvds to folks who don’t have a Hd set-up but waiting to get one, then they some HD content to watch when they finely do. Meanwhile they can use the regular dvds

This approach will probably generate more sales, and possibly cut down on the dreaded ptp activity .
As for the issue of Real networks, as a President said, the barn door is open and the horses are already gone. its too late to stop copying, the technology is already in the wild, both hardware and software wise, so why net let let a company make some leginate money that have to pay taxes on, and hopfully make a better product along the way?

@Lars:  you also pay extra for a digital copy.  If it was available as a ‘perfect’ copy I might consider paying $1 more for it, so I could use it legally in a media server. 
My main issue with digital copies is that if they are typically keyed to the machine you download them on, so if you buy a new computer, you may not be able to transfer the files from the old one, or have to pay to download it again on a new machine.

What is wrong with letting me store a perfect copy of the disc digitally? I want the convienience of no physical discs, with the safety factor of having the physical media to re-install if something goes wrong.  I also don’t think I should have to pay extra for it if I already bought the disc.

As I said earlier, make me validate a disc occasionally if it will keep the MPAA happy, so I will be discouraged from ‘ripping’ rentals. 

Side note:  Don’t these studio’s ever think that if a customer can ‘rip’ a rental, they probably have the capability to just copy the disc to begin with???

The movie industry already has come up with a solution. it’s called Digital Copy—the extra disc you get with many BD and DVD titles that lets you make a copy for your computer or iPod. works pretty well, but of course it’s not for large-screen viewing and doesn’t solve the problem of older catalog titles.

Opinion piece on this subject:

Would Studios Rather We Buy DVD Ripping Products Offshore?
As studios work to quash legitimate products like RealDVD, offshore providers of DVD ripping software—like AnyDVD developer SlySoft—are reaping the rewards.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but Kaleidescape’s system occasionally asks you to insert the original DVD upon playback of the copied file as an authentication to further reduce liability to Kalidescape that they have nothing in place to prevent people from copying rented discs.

Mind you, I think you can also choose to validate the disc at a later time an unlimited number of times, you just have to put up with the annoying validation popup.

I think if Realnetworks implimented something similar and that you could only choose to skip validation say 3-5 times, the movie industry might not be happy, I doubt they would be as pissed off.