GregNews: copyright shutting down 321 studios

[Hartmut Pilch <phm@a2e.de>]

Greg Aharonian's Internet Patnet News Service and this law was deadly to
321 Studios, (http://swpat.ffii.org/players/aharonian/) reports about a
DMCA lawsuit against 321 Studios Inc, a company that was writing software
for circumventing copy-prevention mechanisms.  Because the DMCA contains
the word "copyright" in its name, Greg concludes that copyright is a very
dangerous weapon, more dangerous than patents.

Anti-circumvention laws apply to patented goods as well.  In fact they may
even apply when there is no "IP" at all, e.g. when someone burns 18th
century archives from a library to a copylocked disk. Anti-circumvention
laws do not define any exclusivity scope, they are an orthogonal issue.

Greg seems to have been misled by naming.

This may be noteworthy, since GregNews is widely received and Greg's
pro-patent anti-copyright texts are often cited and taken seriously by
scholars such as Prof. William Kingston of Trinity College (a kind of
IP pope in the UK and Ireland).

------------------------------------

    -  COPYRIGHT LAWS SHUT DOWN SOFTWARE COMPANY

I confess - I was wrong - intellectual property laws can be use to shut
down software companies.  The FFII crowd is right.  A small company in
the US was just forced out of business because of IP laws.  My apology
to FFII - IP laws can be used to hurt software companies.  So I would
like to propose that FFII start a campaign to eliminate this form of
IP that was used to shut down a software company.  This form of IP is
I guess a real threat.  The form of IP:

                                software copyright

So it is time for me to agree with FFII and encourage you to start an
effort to eliminate this form of IP that is actually hurting software
companies (as opposed to the hallunicogenic fantasies of the Munich city
government), an IP law that is really hurting software companies -
software copyright.  Cut the crap about bad software patents being the
only boogie monster in the IP world.

                                      ====

321 Studios Shuts Its Doors 
By Katie Dean, WIRED Magazine, 04:10 PM Aug. 03, 2004 PT

321 Studios, the company that sold DVD-copying software and faced an
avalanche of lawsuits from the entertainment industry, shut down Monday. 
The St. Charles, Missouri, company made DVD-X Copy and DVD Copy Plus --
programs that allowed users to make backup copies of their commercial DVDs.
Hollywood studios filed several lawsuits to force the company to stop selling
its products, saying the company was helping pirates. The Missouri company
had denied any wrongdoing, claiming DVD purchasers had the right to make
copies for personal use. 

"They've ceased operations," said Michael Page, an attorney with Keker &
Van Nest, who represented 321 Studios.  "They couldn't afford to do
business and fight all the legal fights. They essentially got sued out
of existence." 

In February, Judge Susan Illston of the Northern District Federal Court
for California ruled that 321 Studios' products violated copyright law. 
The studios argued that 321's software bypassed CSS, the digital locks
that protect the content. Any mechanism that circumvents these locks is
a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. In response, 321
countered that its customers have a right to make personal copies.
Illston sided with the studios. 

The company appealed the ruling. Page said he had filed a brief in the
appeal Friday. He said there were seven lawsuits, including some in the
United Kingdom, against the company at one point.   "It's really
unfortunate that we can't get one of (the lawsuits) to an appellate
court and get (the court) to look at the DMCA issues," Page said. 

The shutdown "doesn't come as a surprise," said Fred von Lohmann, an
attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "The injunctions had
made it impossible for them to continue to sell any products."

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-18979927
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
330,000 votes 3000 firms against software patents    http://noepatents.org/