RIGHT TO COPY SOUGHT 321 STUDIOS TAKES ON BIG BOYS IN LAWSUIT FOR RIGHT TO DUPLICATE DVDS.Byline: From Staff and Wire Reports A small software company is taking on entertainment behemoths, suing nine major movie studios for the right to sell a program that allows the user to copy commercial DVDs. St. Louis-based 321 Studios filed a complaint Monday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The software company wants the court to rule that sale of its software, DVD DVD: see digital versatile disc. DVD in full digital video disc or digital versatile disc Type of optical disc. The DVD represents the second generation of compact-disc (CD) technology. Copy Plus, is legal and does not violate provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a United States copyright law which implements two 1996 WIPO treaties. It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services that are used to measures that control access to copyrighted works (commonly . The DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) A U.S. law enacted in late 1998 that provides penalties for developing hardware or software that overrides copy protection schemes for digital media. was signed into law by former President Clinton in 1998 and addresses the issue of copyright protection for a variety of digital media content. ``Our stance is that the DMCA is overbroad and unconstitutional,'' 321 Studio's President and CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. Robert Moore said Wednesday. ``We just don't feel that it's right to tell the American public that they cannot copy their own property.'' DVD Copy Plus allows the user to make a compressed lower-quality copy of the original DVD and burn it onto a blank CD, which can then be viewed in a home DVD player - backing up ``Bambi,'' if you will. Emily Kutner, a spokeswoman for the Encino office of the Motion Picture Association of America said the trade group was still looking over a copy of the complaint Wednesday, but could offer no further insight on the matter. ``We're not commenting at this time,'' she said. The suit names MGM MGM in full Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc. U.S. corporation and film studio. It was formed when the film distributor Marcus Loew, who bought Metro Pictures in 1920, merged it with the Goldwyn production company in 1924 and with Louis B. Mayer Pictures in 1925. Studios, Tristar Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Time Warner Entertainment, Disney Enterprises, Universal Studios, The Saul Zaentz Company and Pixar Corporation as defendants. Most declined comment, citing corporate policy against discussing pending litigation An action brought in court to enforce a particular right. The act or process of bringing a lawsuit in and of itself; a judicial contest; any dispute. When a person begins a civil lawsuit, the person enters into a process called litigation. . ``We haven't seen the suit yet, so I can't comment on it,'' said Michelle Bergman of the Burbank-based Walt Disney Co. Moore said he has sold 75,000 copies of DVD Copy Plus since July. The software package is not completely proprietary and contains some software that has been available for free over the Internet, Moore added. There is computer code called DeCSS which allows the user to decrypt To convert secretly coded data (encrypted data) back into its original form. Contrast with encrypt. See plaintext and cryptography. the Content Scramble System Content Scramble System (CSS) is a Digital Rights Management (DRM) scheme used on almost all commercially produced DVD-Video discs. It utilizes a weak, proprietary 40-bit stream cipher algorithm. The system was introduced around 1996 and has subsequently been compromised. that most commercial DVD movies employ to prevent unauthorized digital duplication. Circumvention of the Content Scramble System is prohibited by the DMCA, which reads in part, ``No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.'' Moore said he isn't exactly sure what his company's software does to duplicate DVDs, or if it contains the hotly debated DeCSS code. He said his company does not know if DVD Copy Plus circumvents CSS (1) See Cascading Style Sheets. (2) (Content Scrambling System) The copy protection system applied to DVDs, which uses a 40-bit key to encrypt the movie. or merely somehow captures a video stream from the DVD. ``There are some actual technological issues that even we are not aware of,'' Moore said of the seeming magic of his software. He described the small company as more of a customer service company along the lines of Red Hat, a company that distributes a version of the freely available Linux operating system. 321 Studios also has offices in Berkeley and in Wilmington, Del. |
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