The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has announced that once again a court has ruled against a DVD player manufacturer for violations of the Content Scrambling System (CSS) agreement. The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California ruled that the plaintiffs are allowed to review and test any new or re-engineered product incorporating the copy protection technology before it can make it to market.
The court issues a permanent injunction banning Gowell Electronics Ltd. from violating the CSS license agreement. It is the result of lawsuit brought against the company in June by the MPAA alleging breach of contract and it is the ninth case in which a court has sided with the MPAA members in preventing future violations of the CSS license.
The MPAA estimates that it loses $11 billion per year from the sale of pirated goods and illegal copying. CSS is a (weak) prevention against copying that was beaten a decade ago and is present on pretty much all retail DVDs on the market.
Result for: copy protection technology
A class action lawsuit has been filed against Electronics Arts claiming that the publisher is violating California law by hiding the fact that the hit game Spore install SecuROM DRM which is impossible to remove.
EA has been under fire since the release of the game on September 7th with many gamers taking exception to the crippling SecuROM DRM which allows for the game to only be installed 5 times over its lifetime and only allows for a single user profile.
The more bitter complaint however is that after it is installed, SecuROM cannot be removed and will linger on your PC until a reformat. SecuROM could even be considered malware by some accounts as it will monitor your computer’s activities, preventing duplication.
The SecuROM backlash seems to be hitting EA in their wallets as well, with some reports saying 500,000 illegal downloads were made of the game in just the first week.
The new suit, filed by law firm Kamber Edelson on behalf of all Spore buyers, says the publisher violated the California Consumer Legal Remedies Act and Unfair Competition Law by not making clear that SecuROM cannot be uninstalled once installed.
“Although consumers are told the game uses access control and copy protection technology, consumers are not told that this technology is actually an entirely separate, stand-alone program which will download, install, and operate on their computer,” reads the complaint. “Once installed, it becomes a permanent part of the consumer’s software portfolio. Even if the consumer uninstalls Spore, and entirely deletes it from their computer, SecurROM remains a fixture on their computer unless and until the consumer completely wipes their hard drive through reformatting or replacement of the drive.”
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