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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (98928)	5/16/2003 9:03:04 AM
From: Pogeu Mahone	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

The World's No.1 Science & Technology News Service Legal blow for DVD-copying software 12:54 16 May 03 NewScientist.com news service Companies selling DVD-copying software received a legal blow on Thursday when a judge hearing Hollywood's case against one firm said she is "substantially persuaded" by previous cases that the software violates the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The case against 321 Studios is being heard in San Francisco by District Judge Susan Ilston, who said she aims to make her ruling quickly. A consortium of movie studies, including MGM, Tristar, Columbia, Disney and Universal, want an injunction to bar 321 from selling its product. The software enables people to make perfect digital copies of films. The movie studios argue this permits illegal copies to be made and circulated, infringing their copyright. 321 says the software allows people to make back-up copies of DVDs they have already paid for, and want the case to go to trial. A request for an injunction against five other software companies has been filed in New York by the Paramount and 20th Century Fox movie studios. Industry observers have said that these cases could make or break the controversial 1998 DCMA legislation, which aims to stop people breaking copy protection technologies. After Thursday's partial summary judgement, Marta Grutka, a spokeswoman for the Motion Picture Association of America said: "We think this is an open and shut case." Rob Semaan, 321's Chief Executive admitted being "a little bit discouraged" by the judge's statement, but said he thought the arguments set out by his lawyers were convincing. Compressed code 321 has been selling its DVD Xcopy software since the end of 2002, for $100. It allows a DVD movie disc to be copied to a blank DVD, even though the compressed MPEG code on the disc is usually digitally encrypted using the Content Scrambling System. CSS makes conventional copies unplayable. But Xcopy does not hack the CSS protection, which would explicitly break copyright laws. Instead it uses a conventional DVD ROM player to unscramble the MPEG code for legitimate playback, and then sends it to a temporary cache file on the PC's hard drive. From there Xcopy copies the unscrambled MPEG code onto a blank DVD using a conventional DVD burner. The software has had a major disadvantage. Most movie DVDs are pressed on dual layer discs with about 9 GB capacity, while blank DVDs have only 4.7 GB capacity. So PC users need to span a DVD9 movie over two blanks. However, the latest version of Xcopy, released just a week before the latest court hearing, overcomes this problem. Extra compression is used on the MPEG code as it is cached, so that the entire movie can be burned onto a single blank DVD. Related Stories Court to rule on software that copies 'protected' DVDs 7 December 2002 Ultra-high resolution DVDs are unprotected 8 November 2002 Tiny optical disc could store five movies 18 October 2002 For more related stories search the print edition Archive Weblinks 321 Studios Motion Picture Association of America Electronic Freedom Foundation Protect Fair Use campaign "Fragile and easily