RSSCourt Sounds Death Knell for 321 Studios
By David Worthington | Published June 17, 2004, 6:30 PM
321 Studios may be in for its last dance. Chief Executive Robert Moore announced that the company's operations could grind to a halt in the near future. 321's controversial flagship product DVD X Copy, which bypasses rights management applications, was deemed illegal by a San Francisco judge who consequently ordered the company to pull its product from the market.
This legal setback, coupled with the significant loss of revenue stemming from the judge's decision and a recent round of lawsuits, set in motion the chain of events that led to Moore's dire proclamation.
Moore testified on May 12 in front of the U.S. House Congressional Hearing for H.R. 107, the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act (DMCRA), advocating "Fair Use" and vowed to fight on.
As per LegalDefinitions.com, "The fair-use rule is a privilege in others than the owner of the copyright to use the copyrighted material in a reasonable manner without his consent. The reasonableness of a use is determined on a case-by-case basis applying an equitable rule of reason analysis."
More detailed information about Fair Use is available from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
However, Moore's fight could be all but over. In what may be a telltale sign of 321's demise, Julia Bishop-Cross, 321 Studios' Director of Public Relations, is no longer with the company and was unable to grant a request for an interview.
In a last ditch attempt to sway public opinion, 321 Studios delivered 175,000 supportive letters written by its customers to the Motion Picture Society of America (MPAA). The MPAA would not accept the letters.
"It's not surprising that Hollywood, having seen the volume of music traded online, would want to keep a lock and key on DVDs. The concern is no small stakes," commented Jupiter Research senior analyst Joe Wilcox.
"With double layer DVD burners coming to market, consumers would have the capacity to burn content from Hollywood movies. Rent it. Burn it. Steal it. That scenario, and trading of high-quality movies online, is something studios would want to prevent," said Wilcox.
According to 321's Web site, the company has reduced its payroll from roughly 400 employees down to fewer than 50.
To say their software "bypasses rights management" is being extremely generous to the DVD-CCA. CSS is not a "rights management" system, it's merely a trivial technological barrier, barely the equvalent of a "no trespassing" sign hung on a picket fence. Calling it "rights management" is like calling ROT13 "encryption".
As others have mentioned, 321 borrowed the concept of, if not the actual code from, freely available sources. Their only innovation was in packaging, marketing, and useability; call it finding the lowest common denominator for the applicaiton genre. Anyone who really wants to pirate DVDs is using other, better, more sophisticated software anyway.
BTW, I don't group people who rent-and-copy among "pirates"; they're just time-s***ing's all... You know: get a Netflix account, and a copy of Gordian Knot, and expand your movie-CD collection...
We all just watch any given movie once or twice anyhoo.
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|It's good to see when this rip-off company tries to rip consumer's hard-earned money using someone else's codes.
DVD Decrypter does a great job in ripping plus it's free. And there are so many free utilities out there to burn DVDs.
Forget 321 Studio.
http://www.ogrish.com
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|Always amazes me how fast the courts run when it comes to declaring something illegal when it may hurt the multi-media industry, while anything that can physically hurt and kill people is very legal as long as you get a 2bit licence.
Why is there no one out in front of that courthouse that yells "it's not software that makes copies , it's people that do it".
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|If they do go under, they should release the source code, if they can, and let the open souce community take over.
What d'you think?
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|i agree completely
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|Might as well. Then they'd have a million more people to send lawsuits to. A lot of stamps to lick...
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|excellent idea!
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|What? So it can die like so many other Open Source fiascos? Far too many Open Source projects have died because while the wunnerful buzzwords "free and open" got used, the amount of talent actually working on them was less than zero.
It might work but I think you've got serious Rose Colored Glasses on if you expect Open Source to be a panacea for situations like this. It usually is NOT.
Personally, if I were him I'd be marketing the technology to overseas concerns (Nero, are you listening?) where the long insidious tentacles of the psuedo-police state known as the US couldn't reach it.
He'd get paid to boot and people don't kid yourself: THAT is where it's really at.
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|They can go overseas - but the law will soon catch up with them there too.
Personally I think Open Source is their only chance. They should stab the authorities in the back, release it as Open Source, take a bow, say thank you and sign off with a graceful smile on their face, while the authorities stare gob smacked.
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|off topic but what will happend if they go out of business. how will we activate the software? money gone :(
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|that is true, and i guess theres no way to compensate you
however i like the open source idea, anythin to hit the RIAA and riaa type org's im in favor of
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|I emailed 321 to ask what would happen to our licenses if they go under. Waiting for a reply...
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|Don't take me as a pesimist, but is that what open source is becoming? A place where unlawful applications or rogue programs go so they get implemented? I guess viruses and other law breaking applications should move to Open Source and flourish.
Don't take me wrong I use all of 321's apps specially the gamexcopy... but Open Source shouldn't be where rogue apps end up. In the end if they stop making it, you can stop being a decent guy(or girl) and just download it from emule... Either way you are circunventing the law because its going to be illegal regardless you copy it or you get it by open source.
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