321 studio loses court decision

[Guest]

321 studios lost a supreme court decision regarding its software. I think the gist of it was that it is now illegal to remove security encryption from dvds. Anyone esle know about this? Does this mean we cant discuss backups like warez,etc.

[adam]

Do you have a link because I don't see anything that recent on 321 Studio's regarding its DVD software. There are so many ongoing legal issues with them right now, but I can tell you that none of them have any precedence outside of the 9th Circuit or New York, so no it won't affect what goes on at this forum.

Back in Feb. DVD-X-Copy was ruled to be in violation of DMCA because of its DeCSS routines. They removed the DeCSS routines and continued distributing the software, vowing to appeal. That was out of the California Supreme Court. The only place to go from there is the United States Supreme Court, and no this did not happen and I'm sure it never will because 321 Studio's will probably go bankrupt any day now.

They were also enjoined by Macrovision probably less than a month ago, for patent infringement. That effectively prevented them from distributing DVD-X-Copy at all. This case was out of New York.

Finally, they were just recently sued by several video game manufacturers for their Games-X-Copy software.

[Guest]

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,116539,00.asp

[adam]

Yup, its just for their software to backup games, and it would only have mandatory precedence in New York. But they haven't lost, the suit hasn't even taken place yet. Fact is, the lawsuit will probably never happen at all because they will most likely file for bankruptcy first.

This is actually a much more important issue then their dvd backup software. There is no real right to backup a DVD in the United States, but there is an explicit right to backup pc software. So here, there is a real conflict between the DMCA and copyright allowances.