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Lawsuits Force 321 Studios Out Of Business
elegie writes "321 Studios has gone out of business. Earlier, they came under fire for producing DVD disc-copying software. Specifically, it was argued by movie studios that the DVD-X Copy software and the DVD Copy Plus software violated the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) anticircumvention rules. 321 Studios argued that copying a DVD disc for personal use counted as "fair use" in terms of copyright law. The EFF has said that the closing was not surprising because of all the legal injunctions against 321 Studios."
There's an important lesson to be learnt here.
Wasn't the point of the legal system once to protect the weak from the poor. Somewhere along the line something happened to that ideal.
www.fishkeeping.co.uk
... but you can't fight people with deeper pockets as has been shown over and over again
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
when all these companys take rights away from legitimate users like that...if people really wanna break the law they will but what if someone needs to do something legitimate with it...what are they supposed to do...this company is just one exaple of of this whole bullshit with copying stuff...no protection scheme has stoped pirate from copying stuff iligally...
Yaknow, it really sucks that the movie industry has become what is has, or heck, that the media industry has, but there are laws and there are consequenses for breaking them.
If it were up to me i'd be all about open media, and i'm sure most of the people on here would be too, but infortunatley the people concerned only with making money do not hold to the same ideals that we do.
I guess it comes down to the same deal as the RIAA. I hate their guts, but when you consider what they're doing in suing a ton of people, they ARE right, legally speaking. People are stealing from their income, so they "legally" have the right to sue them.
The only problem is business ethics, but thats another story altogether.
Now, when they are out of bussines, they wouldn't mind "leaking" source code into public. (pref. with BSD licence :) )
The DMCA expressly forbids systems that bypass copy protection systems, like cracking the CSS encryption codes. Wouldn't software that performs a bitwise direct copy of the encrypted data therefore be legal, as it's not attempting to play the DVD on unauthorized hardware, nor is it decrypting the MPEG-2 stream in any way?
"They couldn't afford to do business and fight all the legal fights. They essentially got sued out of existence." That's becoming a far too common theme these days.
If things like DVD shrink are distibuted for free what can they do. Tell the author to stop and then some one else picks up the slack, and the chase starts again.
But when you package the software sell it in retail stores and pretty much stick in front of the industry's face what do you expect them to do? Make better movies in hopes people will be so taken back they have to buy the movie? Spend countless millions developing better security to have it broken in a week or just shut down 321?
Dunno, but sounds like something that would get you in loads of trouble and cast shadows on the good work of Open Sourcers. In sympathize, but pick your battles wisely, as 321's demise should underscore. Even EFF doesn't likely have the deep pockets to fight all villains in MPAA/RIAA, etc.
Probably 321 would also suffer immense litgation if their code slipped into the wild anyway.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The public needs to be rendered totally unable to copy or play DVDs in a way of their choosing, as the law prescribes, before they will wake up and actually understand what the law prescribes. Right now there's no reason to fight the DMCA because no one knows what it really means. It's a ban on any speech which could be used to play DVDs or other media the way we want. And that's a pretty amazing thing.
What's really amazing is that people won't care. The MPAA (and RIAA for that matter) has been able to completely warp the truth about your rights when it comes to how, why, when, and where you watch/listen to your media.
These two organizations will continue to alter reality slowly and people will actually continue to listen. Doing what you say will have no effect.
People are sheep.
What customer list? Believe it or not, CompUSA does not sample your DNA and track everything you buy. This is not like an ISP where they have a list of customers, at best they'll have a list of the 2% that bothered to register.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
No matter how superior dvdshrink maybe over DVD-X, I have never seen a boxed copy at a local retailer.
If you are a less than computer savvy user at your local Best Buy wandering around the software section, you are far more likely to stumble upon DVD-X and use it then you are to find dvdshrink on your own.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
They were beset with legal issues, but especially over the product they were currently building. It was an application that would let you rip your DVDs to your hard disk, auto-recognize and name them (like CDDB does for CDs), organize them, and play them back. Once ripped, you could put your DVDs in the basement and forget about them. The MPAA, etc., did not like this one bit, and ensured that it would never see the light of day.
There are hardware devices that do just this, but they're constructed so as to disallow easy extraction of the DVD data from the device. This precludes the user employing such devices as copying machines. You can't have such assurances from a pure software application on your PC, and that was the crux of 321's problems.
Thats simple to avoid. It gets on a p2p network like emule and it doesn't go away.
An idealist would say that people should care anyway, even if they aren't personally affected. A pessimist (the parent) would say that people will never care, no matter what. A realist says people are motivated most strongly by self-interest. Me, I agree with the idealist about what should be, and with the realist about what is ;-)
A cynical realist says that the masses care only when it limits their bread and circuses. But inability to copy DVDs actually does cut into that...
I think you misunderstand. Daxx's point is that people won't care as long as the issue is abstract. When it starts to hit them personally, there will be action.
I think it's you that misunderstands. People aren't going to understand that they have a leg to stand on especially with more and more money being pumped into lawmaking to enable the MPAA/RIAA to do what they want.
People aren't motivated by much these days. We have always had factions that went against the norm. Everyone else conforms. Sad reality but a true one.
Great idea! While we're at it, lets all stop murdering, stealing, and being altogether unpleasant. Then we can get rid of all our laws and live in a utopia!
In all seriousness, the bad actions(paint with your own brush on definition of 'bad') of the few don't excuse new draconian laws that penalize the good. Bad legislation is the problem, and asking everyone to behave so new bad legislation won't be written is not the solution.
CD Burners don't break laws, people do
Guns don't kill people, people do
Cars don't kill people, people do
Software don't break laws, people do
Knives don't kill people, people do
Sorry but hello law makers please take reeval your prioritys.. If you want to do something good make laws that keep guns out of killers hands, that keep cars out of the hands of drunk drivers and things like that..
Spend more time protecting the PEOPLE not the greedy big business.
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Dunno, but sounds like something that would get you in loads of trouble and cast shadows on the good work of Open Sourcers.
Wait, helping promote Fair Use would "cast shadows on the good work of Open Sourcers"? How do you figure?
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
If the product was formally sold then the DMCA (for media) and EULAs (for software) would have no leg to stand on. No one, except the media/software industry, rents a product which can be easily copied. Instead those products are adjusted so that the sale price is profitable. Instead, software is licensed, via the EULA, and media is licensed for use, defined in terms of the licensing agreement. Consumers no longer buy the product but instead purchase a right to use the license.
What is the difference between a product which is sold and a product which is rented? A product which is sold is the property of the owner and the owner has the right to do with it as they please. A product which is rented is still the property of the owner and the renter is bound by terms of a usage agreement. What, then, is the difference between a product which is licensed and a product which is rented? There is none. When a consumer rents a product they sign a contract accepting terms of use. When a consumer purchases a software/media license they accept a contract accepting terms of use.
Why the jargon difference, then?
The jargon difference is this: the breach of a rental agreement is a civil matter which requires the owner to retain legal counsel and compile a legal case. Consider the rights of landlords, automobile rental agencies, or your local hardware store renting out powertools. The breach of a license agreement has been manipulated to be a felony offense in which the financial burden of investigation has been passed onto the taxpaying public as a whole.
There is not a more blatant example of corporate political graft.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
I'm unaware of an authoritative or canonical list of these so-called natural truths. It occurs to me that one person's natural truth is likely to clash directly with another's. No one of us can legitemately claim to have a particular access to any particular objective truth. We've each got our own 'personal truth' and that is natural.
I don't disagree with your claim that people must exercise personal discretion and conscience and challenge laws they percieve as unust. But in doing so, they must be aware it is only their own point of view they represent, their own perception, not any particular idealized or absolute definition of what is true and right. That kind of thinking (that one is in possession of or has access some absolute moral or social truth) doesn't lead in very good directions - I think history speaks to that point.
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
This was the end goal, to get them out of business.
If it cant be done via the legal system directly, then just sue them to the point they cant afford to keep fighting.
Its too bad you cant recoup costs from tactics like this.. When you are innocent, but are under attack.
This is the same thing they are trying with other industries as well, such as the gun industry. Expect more, as its VERY effective..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The parent poster was advocating one product over another and I was making clear that regardless of which product was superior, one has store level boxed presence which in the eyes of most consumers makes up for any difference in quality.
It's easy to say "People should use Y instead of Z", but if you do not make it easy for all users to obtain Y in a way that they find easy (no 5 step process (ie simple boxed copy), you do not win them over.
Under the same logic I am using... part of the reason Windows based PC's sell so much better than Linux based PC's is that Windows based PC's are far more common to be found at your local store. Regardless of which is a superior product by any measure, Windows wins because it has the presence, just as DVD-X did, just as Linux and dvdshrink lack.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
... you're on to something there.
In order to re-compress DVD data to fit on a single layer disc, you have to circumvent CSS encryption. But if you're just doing a raw sector copy, you don't. Arguably.
I suppose they'll just argue that by reading raw sectors, you're circumventing DRM. Then they'll lobby Congress to outlaw disk editors and undeleters, and require file system drivers to be digitally signed by the MPAA.
Yes and no. Many DVD apps (for windows anyway) can play a DVD Directory containing the VOB files etc. But an even easier way is to use the Daemon Tools and mount the ripped ISO as a Virtual DVD drive and play it from that. CrownRai
Completely wrong. LAME right now is an full-fledged MP3 compiler, but before May 2000, it was simply a patch to the Fraunhofer demonstration code (which was not open). Hence, it was not a MP3 encoder. It couldn't even be compiled without the Fraunhofer code. Now, it is an MP3 compiler. The fact that it's in source code format or executable is irrelevent.