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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 ..."
... ignore something so customer friendly and inviting as DCE!!!
Now this is truly funny. Not buying from them is a violation of the law? I suspect it's a publicity campaign. Lawsuits are very popular for that sort of thing, nowadays.
Hax-fu?
So Apple by NOT using any DRM, is circumventing the DMCA?
Let me be the first to call BULLSHIT on that. DMCA only applies AFTER you've applied DRM to the material involved. I hope the judge tells this little company to GTFO of his courtroom and laugh them out of court because in all honesty this lawsuit is bullshit.
Remember it is the right of the company to choose NOT to protect the copyright with DRM. Apple is taking a step in the right direction with their iTunes store with the DRM-free songs people can buy even if is its $1.30 (which may be more than the market is willing to bear).
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
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.
It won't work. Even if you don't say anything, you're "failing to include measures to control access" and thus "constitut[ing] a circumvention of a copy protection system." -Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
I think it's about the right time for me to file suit against Media Rights Technologies for not employing me at a salary of $10,000,000/year to refill their coke machines. Because of their unwillingness to hire me as a coke machine filler, their machines are dreadfully low, who knows how many people could become thirsty as a direct result..!!
Some companies really have no conscience.
MABASPLOOM!
Dead people being sued for not living.
Next up: Dostoevsky scholars denied access to source materials because they couldn't not think of a white bear.
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...
Does this mean SCO can sue IBM for not including their copyrighted code in Linux?
This company has cent cease and desist letters.
That's all.
There is no lawsuit. There's the apparent threat of a lawsuit, but that's all.
Move along folks. Move along.
Oh, thank God! Now I can repurpose a hundred thousand neurons I've dedicated to making sure I never click on that link. I feel smarter already!
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.
ObDisclaimer: IANAL
I think it's high time we had lawsuit reform.
Reform #1: If lawsuit is deemed frivolous, plaintiff pays for defendant's legal fees, court costs, and some penalty to be divvied between the court and the defendant(s).
Reform #2: Neither party is allowed to spend more on legal fees and/or time spent, in the case of pro bono.
Reform #3: If a plaintiff has had 3 lawsuits deemed frivolous, they are barred from suing for one year. A fourth is 5 years. A fifth is 10 years.
Reform #4: A lawyer who's had 3 or more lawsuits dismissed for frivolity is suspended for one year. A fourth is grounds for disbarment. A fifth is automatic disbarment.
Like I said previously, IANAL. Some of these might already be in place. Some might not be good ideas. But the time for stopping this litigious nonsense has come.
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
Come on guys. You are looking at this all wrong. You WANT them to win this suite. Why? Because then the big corporations will FINALLY be on OUR side in saying the DMCA is one of the worst laws to be passed in recent times.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
I'm safe from these lawsuits.
Absolutely everything I produce (including this post) is encrypted with 26 rounds of a sophisticated encryption algorithm known as ROT13. Sometimes, when I'm feeling particularly concerned about the value of the IP I'm producing, I'll apply 32 or even 64 rounds of this algorithm!
I am afraid, however, that by decrypting this post, you are in violation of the DMCA. See you in court suckers!
Ian Ameline
It's an obvious attempt to mooch free advertising. And here we are, giving them exactly what they want. All for the cost of having their lawyer send a couple of C&D letters. Sad. (But instructive).
I can't help thinking of the judge reaching under his desk, and pulling a lever, dropping a 16 ton weight on the plaintiff and his lawyer.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
these guys don't have the same board of directors(or major stock holders) as SCOG do they?
Geez, the world has gone insane
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
if a lawsuite is frivolous it means that it should never gone to court in the first place. Alot of the cases that come up on court tv are not frivolous. They may be Joe Redneck wanting his cousin to give him back his trans am seat cover but its still a legitimate claim. Just because its in small claims court doesn't mean its frivolous. Remember most of these people don't even have lawyers.
I know you were kidding around I'm just bored.
Take off your blinders buddy, there are no friendly companies so long as DRM is out and about. You want it totally gone. Not half-ass solutions that RoughlyDrafted insists are acceptable.
Completely frivolous lawsuits really aren't really that big a problem. The bigger problem is lawsuits which have some slim amount of merit, so they aren't technically frivolous, but which are brought mainly for harassment purposes. You're not really allowed to do that, but it's exceptionally hard to ascribe motive. We do have anti-SLAPP laws to address some of these problems.
Reform #1: In the US, Rule 11 sanctions are available if you institute a frivolous lawsuit. The exact sanction is determined by the judge on a case-by-case basis, and may be against the party, his lawyer, the lawyer's firm or any combination thereof. It can be monetary or non-monetary.
Reform #2: Why? If they persist, there'll be another Rule 11 sanction, which would probably be worse.
Reform #3: I don't think you need this. Lawsuits are expensive enough, as-is. If you're forced to pay the other side's fees (see #1), you'll stop quick enough.
Reform #4: This just isn't a problem. How many lawyers do you know who have even filed one frivolous lawsuit?
If this story isn't a complete farce, then there are probably some important details that we're missing.
i fixed your sig... and stole it :P
Don't call me back. Give me a call back. Bye. So yeah. But bye our, well, but alright we are on a shirt this chill.
The last thing we want is for lawyers to be in prisons. THOUSANDS of potential clients, all with nowhere to run. No, that's just not fair.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
First of all no lawsuit has been filed, they just sent a cease and desist.
This is otherwise known as creative marketing, nobody even knew these guys existed up
to this point. Will they every file a lawsuit? Doubt it, but this little stunt makes
it possible that someone will look and possibly care about whatever snake oil they produce.
Got Code?
The real reason they are claiming that not using their DRM is a circumvention mechanism is because their whole technology depends on their software being present in order for the content to remain protected. If the software is absent, the content can be accessed in the clear. Apparently it is some kind of watermarking system that would trigger the software to check your authorization to access the content.
So, is their technology that dumb? Or just their lawyer?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
The key word in DMCA would be effectively.
What DRM (Well, OK, DCE then) today does effectively control access to a work?
Most DRM Schemes are rendered useless within weeks (often only days) of appearing on the market, the only thing those schemes do is make it a hassle for all of us who legally buy movies, music and so on.
Just my $0.02
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'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*
You know on second thought... this could be treated as an attack on the Open Source movement.
If suddenly anything you distribute needs to be protected by DRM then licensing schemes like the GPL and even Creative Commons License become null and void because DRM exists to restrict the free flow of information.
So technically NO, you do not want them to win this lawsuit despite what other people have been saying in other comments.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
Martha! Fetch up the chainsaw! We got us a legal problem needs fixin.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
As they read the DCMA it sounds like: If you have digital information that you would like to copyright then you must protect it with DRM. That means that EVERYTHING that doesn't have DRM, from this web page to the ROM in your microwave must be protected somehow. So does DRM require DRM?
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.
count in hex much?
Actually, you touched on the problem in your first sentence: completely frivilous lawsuits are not really common. Why? Because lawyers are the ones determining what constitutes frivolity? It's a clear conflict of interest. And one we will never get away from, considering the large percentage of the legislators and judges are lawyers.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The number is in HEX, not Decimal. It should be:
09F9 1102 9D74 E35B D841 56C5 6356 88BF and 09F9 1102 9D74 E35B D841 56C5 6356 88C1
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
There is something wrong with the article. I could read it without loading any DRM software.. Even more important, there is absolutely nothing to prevent a copy and paste or a screen capture of the copyrighted article.
As an example of this failure to protect the copyrighted content, here is a copy/paste from the article.
MRT and Bluebeat said the failure to use an available copyright protection solution contravenes the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which prohibits the manufacture of any product or technology designed to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a copyrighted work or protects the rights of copyright owners.
I think this article would have been best posted in an encrypted form such as they use on Yahoo Music where you need an account to download the article and the article can't be freely posted online on slashdot due to effective DRM. I hope they properly sue Forbes for posting the article without DRM. In the future, I won't be bothered by these type of articles. because I don't do DRM.
I should post as AC so I don't get nailed for the above copyright violation.
Oh except for the above copyrighted quote, I'm posting this post as freeware. Feel free to repost. I hope that takes care of the requirement to post this with DRM.
The truth shall set you free!
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.
.. there sueing some if not the biggest names in the industry, Its like Some kid trying to fight super man, batman, wonderwoman(MS), and the hulk all at once. They are going to get stopmed into the ground if this goes to court.
Er, I mean:
Have gnu, will travel.
These guys can have fun suing VLC. And mplayer. And every other open-source audio program.
Going up against Apple on this one is probably the dumbest things ever for them. I seriously expect Apple to bankrupt them with lawyers and fees just out of spite. And I seriously doubt any judge would fault Apple, either. Probably laugh at their complaints would be my guess.
Moral: Don't kick the shins of the 2000lb gorilla.
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.
These companies don't put DRM on their stuff, so there's no protection to be defeated in the first place. How is the DMCA applicable?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'