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Lawsuit Invokes DMCA to Force DRM Adoption
TechnicolourSquirrel writes "Forbes.com informs us that the company Media Rights Technologies is suing Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, and Real Networks for not using its DRM technology and therefore 'failing to include measures to control access to copyrighted material.' The company alleges that their refusal to use MRT's X1 Recording Control technology constitutes a 'circumvention' of a copyright protection system, which is of course illegal under the Digital Millenium Copryight Act. I would say more, but without controlling access to this paragraph with MRT's products, I fear I have already risked too much ..."
Couldn't any DRM-maker say this same thing and sue again, and again, and again.... Hell, I could make up some random cipher and claim that, too!
These guys are pretty big tools to think that they'll actually get away with this....then again, the way the government (and silly laws) work, they may just win the day.
Just another reason why DRM is not just shit, but it's evil shit.
Didn't Blizzard claim something similar in the bnetd case regarding not testing the cd-key "properly"?
At what point do judges step up and slap around plaintiffs who are obviously abusing the legal system? How frivolous does a lawsuit need to be (such as this "free publicity" lawsuit) before a judge will say enough is enough?
I just found the above text at the bottom of all /. pages. Read that again: all pages. Taking all the posts into account, that means there are probably limitless violations right on this site. In fact, I have to admit that this comment uses no technology from Media Rights Technologies to encrypt it. Perhaps I should have posted as an AC.
That is which not permitted is forbidden, that which is permitted is mandatory. I think that was Orwell. Either way, how Soviet. The greatest enemy of the capitalism these days are the... capitalists...
My initial suspicion was that this company is trying to commit suicide.
However, after engaging the brain for a microsecond, I suspect what they are trying to do is get themselves bought out, because that result is probably cheaper in the long run to one of the big DRM users out there (mm. surprised they didn't sue Sony/Disney)
Otherwise I read the case like this: I don't pay you to get your car keys from you in order to steal your car. I don't steal your car. I don't even know where your car is, and have no intention of stealing it, but I'm guilty of not using the official theft-prevention technology (i.e. your keys) to not steal it. I think that makes about as much sense as this lawsuit.
Macrovision once threatened to sue our company if we wouldn't
license their DRM - because their DRM doesn't work.
The codecs we licensed for our products unintentionally ignored
the Macrovision DRM. It was simply caught by the error correction.
Macrovision threatened to sue the company I work at for violating
the DMCA. This could only be avoided if we explicitly checked their
DRM so we wouldn't ignore it accidentally. To check for their DRM,
we would need to license their system.
you missed the important part. "without the authority of the copyright owner;" anything released on itunes or MS store is clearly going to have the copyright holder's blessing. see this is why the US legal system is fucked. they should impose fines on assholes for creating this frivolous cases. i dunno. even claim $10 an hour for every hour of time it takes up for everyone involved. lawyers, the companies being sued, the judge, court staff, etc. maybe that would stop it. or you could just shoot all the stupid people. but then someone has to assassinate the president.
What is...?
IANAL too, but AFAIK part of #1 already exists:
;-)
after being hit with a frivolous lawsuit, you can sue the plaintiff to recover your legal fees and have a good chance of winning.
In this case, I think plaintiff is asking for it (by suing some big corporations who can afford fighting this bullshit in court
C - the footgun of programming languages
I think it's a front company which was created to bring the DMCA up to the Supreme Court for review, especially considering how nearly useless the technological proposal is. Most likely, the DMCA would be thrown out for violating fair use laws if it ever made it to the Supreme Court. Hmmm... or the fair use laws could be revoked for being overwritten by the DMCA. This should be interesting to watch, indeed.
Resistance is futile. Your technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. You will become one with the morgue
Strictly speaking the analog hole is any interconnect that is NOT digital, because there is no real way to encode an analog signal such that only the intended devices can interpret it. You can try of course but it gets very complicated
Obviously analog will always be subject to this lack of protection because speakers all contain 2 wire analog input, so unless we start hardening speakers like a DoD mainframe there will always be a way to get analog audio by cutting the speaker cone and setting volume level equal to ~1v like RCA line level.
Video is a bit different of course, but rest assured that until televisions are similarly hardened there will be a way to get analog, and probably even digital signals from inside them.
We need to start separating the discussion about piracy from the discussion about DRM, because they aren't entirely linked. DRM is most likely intended to stop sharing between friends, and will never stop real piracy. Until they really do implement a system that stops "break once run everywhere" we will always have piracy because all devices will agree to play media. To turn the system around you need to change the odds into a sort of break once run once system.
It will never happen. Why? Because for the power elite who are in the business of government, lawsuits are simply good business: the more lawsuits, the more power and revenue they "need" in order to administer the whole system, and the more precedent they have for future expansions of power and revenue. Frivilous lawsuits represent business too. What would the power elite prefer: a citizen running to government when his neighbor plays the car stereo too loud, or the citizen actually going across the street to discuss the issue like adults, solving the problem without involving government?
There's a reason why every year we are subject to more laws than the year before, and it's not because expanding government power is unprofitable for those in the business of government. The US government of today dwarfs the US government of only 50, let alone 100 years ago, both in revenue and power over the people. This near-exponential growth of centralized power would never have been possible under a sane system of law, based on simple common sense, the self-evident laws of human nature, and (heaven forbid) understandable by the common man. The more complexity, and the more ambiguity, the more exploitable the law is for the power elite who make their fortunes on Big Government, either directly or (more commonly) indirectly.
It's the same by the same court traditions that protectionist actions have been put against my home province (British Columbia) by the US. RE: softwood lumber levies and protectionist actions against hothouse tomato growers. (*cough* 100 years of hothouse tomatos here. Since when is industrial failures in the southern states - who started growing these ~1980s - OUR fault?) (both are breach of NAFTA... but that's an entirely separate issue. The fact they happened at all is kind of precedence)
So while it may look frivolous - it would pretty much have to go to court to decide. Unfortunately - at least on an international (NAFTA) level - there's precedence. But IANAL and I'm not a US citizen either.
However I suspect the cease and desist letters can be ignored. There doesn't seem (again IANAL) to be any legal validity to them. Perhaps - if it's found the organization's associated with the MPAA or something though - they could be used as evidence as racketeering charges? *grin*
Disbarring the lawyer is a little extreme. You'd be permanently ruining the livelihood of the lawyer, which is particularly unjust if the lawyers are on staffs who's employers force them to pursue frivolous lawsuits. I don't believe it's wise to create a situation where a person risks punishment no matter what action they take.
If you insist on disbarring the lawyers, perhaps you should permanently ban the plaintiffs from litigation as their maximum sentence. It would at least even a little inequality.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Well, first of all, it's DCE and not DRM anymore.
But that's not really funny. Actually, it could be a threat to Linux altogether. How can you make sure that Linux, being compiled from source by its user, keeps said user from accessing content he's not allowed to access?
I predict that a lot of Linux devs and gurus will move out of the US into some free country.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
At the very least if you're going to disbar people, there should be a merely 'frivolous' and a 'flagrantly frivolous'. A merely frivolous suit should automatically have awards to the defendant and a fine from the court. The flagrantly frivolous ones should be the ones that get people disbarred. There's a matter of degree to everything, including how silly a silly court case is.
Note the number in the 16^1 spot is C in the second number thus making it 2 higher than the previous and thus ******C0 is the number in between. I'm writing this because I think you were saying that he was mistaken, if you are instead just pointing out that it isn`t normal to count in hex, well maybe you`re right.