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Connectix Wins Sony Playstation Appeal
In one of the many submissions concerning the recent Connectix victory: Enosson writes, "The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned the lower court injunction prohibiting Connectix from selling Virtual Game Station or using the Sony BIOS in developing new versions of it. The decision says that its use of the copyrighted BIOS in reverse engineering was "fair use," and that any "shoddiness" in the VGS product did not tarnish Sony's PlayStation trademark. The full text of the decision is available." There is also, as you would expect, mention of the ruling on the Connectix site as well.
I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. If you need some,
.).
see a lawyer licensed in your jurisdiction.
You are pretty much correct here, but let me extend and comment a bit.
The ninth circuit is indeed the most often reversed, but that tends
to be because of "lefty" decisions where ideology prevailed over the law.
Criminal cases in particular, when judges confuse the rights of the
accused and general population with the rights of criminals.
THis is a technical case, and of a type that the 9th gets a disproportionate
share. It has more experince with this type of case than most of the
otehr circutes, and the case doesn't fall into the categories that give
the 9th its bad reputation (I won't name names, but there's a judge known
as "Judge Certiori" for the near automatic review . .
The decision might also be classified as "pro-commerce," taking it
far out of the type of cases that tend to be reviewd.
As far as the weight outside of the 9th, it's not as dismal as you
paint it. The decision is not *binding* precedent outside of the
9th circuit, but it is *persuasive* evidence. That is, a a federal
judge in another circuit *can* decide it's wrong, but will not do so
lightly.
Finally, the Supreme Court, when possible, waits until conflicting
opinions arise between the circuits before it hears an issue. It is
unlikely to hear this case.
hawk, esq.
While, strictly speaking, the Connectix product enables users to play their PlayStation back-ups on their G3, we all know that this is not primarily the use to which it will be put.
Actually, Connectix has been extremely conscientious about antipiracy measures. A "modchip patch" exists for Version 1.0 of the software (which sucked compared to later versions) but no such patch exists for later versions of the software. I'm not even certain it can be done.
Also notable is that CVGS cannot use disk images; you must use CD's. This kills most pirates right there. Those who do have burners are harder to stop, but someone who really wants to pirate software is, simply put, going to do it; you can't stop those people. It's no easier with VGS than a "real" PSX.
Yes, there's still a VERY little-known disk-swap trick (and no, I won't say what it is) that you can do with VGS. You can also do this on a regular PSX, so there's no difference.
So this judge has just made it harder for a company engaged in lawful business to earn its justified profits. And why? To protect a principal.
I think you mean "principle." Last I checked there were no school directors involved here.
But you're wrong about one thing. Sony takes a loss on every console it sells. A rather substantial one at that. This is made up for by game sales, yes. But for every copy of VGS sold, Sony saves money. As much as it makes from more than ten individual non-Sony PSX games, or four Sony-made ones. In other words, each person has to do a lot of pirating before Sony takes a loss. It still earns its justified profits before them.
A quick cruise of Hotline or IRC shows the reality.
Yeah. So you should look at it yourself. PSX games are actually quite hard to get on Hotline or IRC. The process often involves bounces all over the Web, signing oneself up for porn lists and/or ad companies, finding passwords, and downloading obscenely huge files which still take hours to download over even the fastest connections. Of course you might be lucky enough to find a "free" server. In this case each image will take days, as the overwhelming traffic will slow the server to a crawl. These servers don't tend to carry many images (few sites do because of space demands) so you'll be bouncing back and forth between servers, repeating the process multiple times to get all the images you wanted. Oh, and since most PSX backup sites don't actually carry the emulators, once you have the images you need you have to go through the process again to find the emulator, and probably several more times to find a patch that works. And then, of course, the game still has to work with the emu.
My point: this isn't what you're making it out to be. Not at all.
Good News: This is the 9th Circuit, so any applicable precedent this sets, would probably be usable in the DeCSS suit (as that suit was filed in California).
Bad News: 9th Circuit decisions are only useful in the 9th Circuit. The 9th Circuit includes a selection of Western states. While the 9th is the largest, its decisions carry no official weight in the other 8 Court of Appeals jurisdictions.
Really Bad News: The 9th Circuit, in recent years, has been the most liberal, and therefore the most overturned, by the Supreme Court. So, if Sony can get the Supreme Court to accept an appeal, then it just might go Sony's way, after all.
Good News: The Rehnquist Court doesn't accept many cases these days. The 9th circuit's decision will probably stand.
This software, afterall, does NOT promote pirating Playstation Software. Rather, it allows people to play Playstation games they have purchased legally without having to purchase the Playstation Console.
An excellent decision by the judge, in my opinion.
"You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
This makes me very, very happy. You'll notice that this case is almost identical to the DeCSS case, and a good precedent has been set. Sony wants to control the players not the media, just like DVDCCA wants to control their players not the media itself. Connectix's product will introduce competition into the Playstation console market, and if DVD technology is ever made open, hopefully other people will be able to offer DVD players not made by the DVDCCA collective monopoly.