A federal Judge has stung RealNetworks badly by issuing a preliminary injunction preventing the company from selling its RealDVD software, which costs $30 a pop. Additionally, the company’s prototype DVD player, Facet, will now also be blocked from sale. RealDVD allowed consumers to make copies of their DVDs onto their computers, while Facet is a HDD-equipped DVD player. The company has maintained that the software is entirely legal.
This case became important because it can answer the question of whether consumers in the U.S. are allowed to make copies of their DVD movies. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) regards Facet and RealDVD as tools of piracy that could cost the industry a lot of money, and claimed they were illegal under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Real argued that because it has licensed Content Scrambling System (CSS) from the DVD Copy Control Association (DVD-CCA), that its software and prototype DVD player do not break provisions surrounding the circumvention of copy protection, disregarding ARccOS and RipGuard.
“RealDVD makes a permanent copy of copyrighted DVD content,” U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Patel wrote in her decision, “and by doing so breaches its License Agreement with the DVD Copy Control Association … and circumvents a technological measure that effectively controls access to or copying of the Studios’ copyrighted content on DVDs.” Real, of course, said it was very disappointed with the Judge’s decision. The MPAA on the other hand called it a victory for the creators and producers of movies and TV shows.
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Result for: digital millennium copyright act
Accused Microsoft product key counterfeiter Adonis Gladney has been convicted this week of violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and is now the first person to ever be convicted under the DMCA for violations relating to the circumvention of security protections on software.
According to Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Missakian, Gladney sold tens of thousands of the counterfeited keys, which are used to activate legitimate software products such as Microsoft Office.
“The defendant couldn’t have executed his scheme without counterfeit access keys,” Missakian noted. “(The keys) allowed purchasers to load software on multiple computers.”
Missakian admitted that even the US Marine Corp. had been duped into buying the phony keys, among thousands of other clients.
With his conviction, it looks like Gladney will likely face 3-7 years in prison, depending on “the amount of monetary damage he caused.”
CNet adds that Gladney, a Los Angeles native “would advertise software licenses in large volume on his Web sites, abovegroundsolutions.com or agsolutionsspc.com. Customers paid their money and received licenses, which prosecutors say Gladney claimed legally covered between 25 and 750 users. Gladney would then ship them a CD loaded with software that authorities say was not designated as a retail product for sale to the general public, such as software that typically comes bundled in PCs.”
“By repeatedly using and distributing the same key codes on multiple products,” added an FBI cyber crimes’ spokesperson, “Gladney is circumventing one of Microsoft’s primary security features
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Result for: digital millennium copyright act
Last October, New Zealand adopted a ‘3 Strikes’ law for pirates, meaning alleged pirates are given two warnings before having their Internet shut off.
The bill, reads as follows:
Internet service provider must have policy for terminating accounts of repeat infringers
(1) An Internet service provider must adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for termination, in appropriate circumstances, of the account with that Internet service provider of a repeat infringer.
(2) In subsection (1), repeat infringer means a person who repeatedly infringes the copyright in a work by using 1 or more of the Internet services of the Internet service provider to do a restricted act without the consent of the copyright owner.
This week however, the New Zealand parliament has agreed to “reconsider” the bill before it goes into effect at the end of the month.
Adds Danny O’Brien, the international outreach coordinator at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF): “One of the things about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is that it’s got these rather strong enforcement mechanisms, but U.S. copyright actually has quite a lot of room for maneuvering for normal users. In the U.S., it was assumed that repeat infringers would be people who are tried in the court of law. And in New Zealand, though similar language was transposed, that was not the way it was read. The outcry has been so great that the New Zealand government has said, ‘Look, we’re not going to enforce this, so we’re going to go back and rewrite the law.’”
