321 Studios Argues That DVD Backups Are Legal
from the not-doing-anything-wrong dept
While yesterday all the news was about how the judge in the Hollywood vs. 321 Studios case was "persuaded" by earlier (bad) decisions in the DeCSS case and the Elcomsoft case, the lawyers for 321 made their case today saying that their DVD copying software does nothing illegal. Their basic argument is that the software is no different than a DVD player itself, allowing people to access content they've paid for. Then, they went on to bring up the ever-popular "fair use" argument. In the case of 321 Studios I'm surprised they don't make a bigger deal out of the fact that it limits the number of times you can copy a single DVD, as that would seem like pretty good evidence that it's not a tool for "piracy". The other interesting thing was that the Hollywood lawyer went out of his way to say this wasn't a case where they were trying to criminalize the user - just the software the user wants to use. No matter what happens, you can assume this case is far from over and will be appealed higher and higher. Update: In related news, the studios are expanding the case by filing lawsuits against other companies that make DVD copying software.
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If only...
...but in reality current DVD "backup" processes are a convoluted, consumer unfriendly endevor.
...and that's why this compnay has to bring a case to court to sore marketing points with potential consumers.
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