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MPAA Countersues 321 Studios
Squash writes "321 Studios, makers of DVD X-Copy, is being Counter-sued by the MPAA. You may remember them filing suit to allow thier software to be produced and sold. Interesting point: the MPAA wants to claim all profits from sales of the software, which is now being bundled with some DVD burners."
its an interesting read. they are actually enforcing fair use to some extent. it doesnt allow copying a copy (as long as its attempted with DVDXCopy), and inserts disclaimer warning screens at the start of each backup. sure teh die-hard hacker is going to copy it by a different means anyhow, but this program is tailored to joe-user that just wants a backup of his dvd and could care less about a warning screen at the start of his movie. it seems they made the program as restrictive as possible, covering the necessary fair use bases without overly-annoying the end user in the process.
This may even make the MPAA look bad should 321s lawyers bring up these facts in court.
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Hell, some people (no names :-) have been ripping DVDs to DVDR and CDR disks for ages using freely available shareware.
There are even some bloody excellent websites like VCDHelp.com and Doom9.net which explain the whole process in simple to follow steps and provide discussion forms for those who have questions or problems.
What's the MPAA going to do now? Force these sites to charge a subscription and demand that all the revenues be handed over to them?
Hey, maybe the MPAA *have* found a new business model -- let people help others make backup copies of your wares and then sue them for huge sums.
Probably sounds pretty damned good from a movie exec's perspective -- let others do all the work then just raid their wallets at your leisure.