Ridiculously Broad Ruling Against DVD Ripper Software Has Court Allow Seizure Of Domains, Social Media & More
from the how-is-that-proper-under-the-law? dept
Who needs SOPA when US judges seem willing to pretend the law already lets them do what SOPA would have created? AACS, the licensing organization that handles the basic encryption used on DVDs, sued one of many DVD ripping software companies, DVDFab (which is based in China). DVD ripping is a somewhat contentious topic. While it's generally accepted (even by the recording industry) that ripping music CDs is legitimate, for whatever reason, Hollywood has fought exceptionally hard against the idea that movies should ever be rippable. With DVD software, they make it "illegal" by placing (weak) DRM on the DVDs, and then claim that any attempt to get around that violates the anti-circumvention clause of the DMCA, 17 USC 1201.AACS sought a preliminary injunction against DVDFab, who chose not to respond to the lawsuit (understandable, seeing as it's based halfway around the world). Of course, rather than just granting a basic preliminary injunction, federal judge Vernon Broderick appears to have issued an order that is basically Hollywood's dream: ordering the seizure of basically everything in an attempt to wipe DVDFab off the internet entirely. It orders the company to stop using its website, domain names and social media. Then, it goes way beyond that, using "this Court's inherent equitable power" to order domain registries to disable the company's URLs and make them "transferable" on the orders of the court -- basically ordering the companies to seize the domain names. Then, it also orders all companies who have anything to do with DVDFab to stop doing business with the company. This includes social networking companies, service providers, advertising firms, payment processors and more:
Any third party service providers providing services to Defendants in connection with any of the DVDFab Domain Names, the DVDFab Websites or the DVDFab Social Media Accounts, and who receive actual notice of this Order, including without limitation, web hosting providers, social media or other online service providers (including without limitation, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google+), back-end service providers, web designers, distributors, search-based online advertising services (such as through paid inclusion, paid search results, sponsored search results, sponsored links, and Internet keyword advertising), and any banks, savings and loan associations, merchant account providers, payment processors and providers, credit card associations, or other financial institutions which receive or process payments or hold assets on Defendants' behalf (including without limitation, Avangate Inc., Avangate B.V., PayPal, Western Union, PayEase, IPS Ltd., Realypay, WorldPay, Opus Payments, Amazon Payments, WorldPay, Money Gram International, WebMoney, Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express, Visa Electron, Maestro, Solo, Laser, and Carte Bleue) for any Defendant or any of the DVDFab Domain Names or the DVDFab Websites, and who receive actual notice of this Order, shall, within three (3) days of receipt of this Order, cease or disable providing such services to: a) Defendants in relation to the DVDFab Software and/or any other products or services that circumvent the AACS Technology; andb) any and all of the DVDFab Domain Names, the DVDFab Websites or DVDFab Social Media Accounts.This goes way, way, way beyond the normal remedies put forth under copyright law. In fact, it was these kinds of solutions which SOPA was designed to add to copyright law. I can understand how a judge only hearing one side of a case goes with the "default" judgment and just gives the single party everything they ask for, but at some point doesn't common sense have to come in, and have people point out that this kind of remedy, seeking to wipe an entire company completely off the face of the internet for daring to do something that's basically legal in similar realms (i.e., with music), seems immensely worrisome.
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Filed Under: anti-circumvention, china, dmca, dvd ripper
Companies: aacs, dvdfab
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Kinda like when they originally sold their software online and had the software that breaks DVD copy-protection on dvdfab.net and the software that doesn't on dvdfab.com (for those non-freedom-loving countries, or at least those countries that like to treat intellectual property is property for producers, but not for consumers.) Everyone I knew, even those in the US, downloaded the software from dvdfab.net even though the DMCA made it illegal to distribute.
I suspect dvdfab.cn will work just as well as dvdfab.com/.net.
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FWIW, it was hideously expensive last time I looked.
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FWIW, it was hideously expensive last time I looked.
They have sales every once in a while (I still get ads for them via email.) I bought the suite a number of years ago for $49, and it was unlimited.
Of course, that was back when I used Windows.
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http://global.alipay.com/ospay/home.htm
PS. Bitcoin is officially banned in China, though they basically just stop transactions from BTC to Yuan.
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DVD Fab can basically tell the NY court to fuck off and there is nothing they can do. That whole sovereignty thing and all. While I know it doesn't matter much to the US, I don't think we will be going to war with China at Hollywood's request.
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New Hotspot
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Order
> off the face of the internet for daring to
> do something that's basically legal in similar
> realms
More like seeking to wipe an entire company off the internet for daring to follow the laws of its own country instead of the laws of a country on the other side of the planet; laws which it is actually under no legal obligation to follow-- no matter what this self-important federal judge thinks.
A Chinese company, based in China, with no presence in the United States does not suddenly become subject to U.S. law and forbidden to do things that are allowed under Chinese laws merely because it puts a website up on the internet.
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I have a .br domain. I registered it in my own country. It is subject solely to my country's laws.
The same applies to any country in the world big enough to have a relevant Internet presence.
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but thats not what I meant by decentralized anyway, even if the U.S. didn't have control over the root zone changes, .br would still centralized under brazil's control. I'm talking about a user controlled system.
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I was going to remind people that the hosts file can be ujsed to map a name to an IP address, but I read somewhere that Microsoft now prevent it being changed on Windows systems.
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And if you want to be fair, suppose the American company in this situation was Microsoft or Google. Could the Chinese government order google.com, gmail.com, and youtube.com all taken down until Google complied with the government's orders?
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Now that' I'd LOVE to see.
This is the old situation where Federal USA judges who are elected (WTF is with that dumb move) who basically even with default judgements are going ultra vires on their actual ability and instead are thinking themselves above any laws by any jurisdiction whatsoever.. in other words FUCK comity.. we are the USA obey us or we'll destroy you.
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I might now just for the Lulz offer my services to DVDFab and send this idiotic federal US court a statement stating they either prosecute me for something and suffer the amazing amount of crap that would come their way (yes that is a threat) or STFU and remove the ambiguous and totally specious order that has just allowed the USA to dictate business contracts anywhere on the planet.
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Common Sense
Did you seriously just mention "JUDGE" and "COMMON SENSE" in the same paragraph? And while there ARE Judges who do display common sense (or sense period), they seem to be in the minority.
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Copyright industry and judges
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Re: Copyright industry and judges
It is harder & more illegal to pay off a citizen than it is any elected official.
Think about this.
Show me a political person with integrity and with an 80% chance of success I can show you some sheep.
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Re: Re: Copyright industry and judges
I should have included a "/s" at the end of my sentence. Sometimes communicating by the written word can be very limited unless you are a talented author, which I am not. :-(
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DVD's
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Too funny.
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And bitcoins can't be blocked like this.
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"It's hilarious that Mike Masnick thought copyright infringement on the web was just going to be forever unpunished.
Too funny."
Ironic you bring up China on an American blog that censors any dissenting comments.
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Somebody should inform the Chinese public.
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"
"It's hilarious that Mike Masnick thought copyright infringement on the web was just going to be forever unpunished.
Too funny."
Ironic you bring up China on an American blog that censors any dissenting comments."
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You're quite the piece of work, aren't you Masnick?
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"You seem to have confused obscurity with censoring.. though then again you also confuse coherent debate with whatever your yabbering of Blarggha Flargga bargha is."
LMAO! :-)
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Astronomically.
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You really think that people who want to format-shift their legally purchased DVDs should be punished?
I mean seriously, who do think this ruling affects? It's not the hard-core uploader - they would use free, open-source alternatives. It's not the average pirate - since they would download an already de-DRMed digital file, not a DVD. The only people really affected by this is your average computer user who wants to copy their latest DVD purchase to their hard drive for convenience.
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Back Under The Bridge where you boys belong now...
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Too funny indeed.
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And you say that pirates are un-ethical.
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that will show them
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So far, they are still in business and the forums are still active.
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Maybe dvdfabulous.com
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Re: Couldn't they just rename themselves ...
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Wait. The financial institutions are prohibited from even holding the money? Normally in a situation like this they're ordered to hold on to the money, not ordered to get rid of it. How on earth are they going to collect any money if the banks are, essentially, ordered to give the money back to DVDFab?
Was this a screw-up on the part of the judge, or is there some legal reason it's worded like that?
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March toward irrelevancy
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Not true. We actually produce as much (more by some estimations) as we ever have. It's what we make that's changed. We don't make consumer goods so much anymore. Now we make really huge-ticket items instead -- manufacturing tools, industrial robots, supercomputers, that sort of thing.
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although this is extremely worrisome, i wonder what the USA would have said if the situation were reversed and one of the American companies had been totally closed down, had all assets seized and been banned from operating, just because an industry in the respective company had asked for that result? i would suggest the USA would have gone absolutely ape shit!
what is, perhaps, even more worrisome is how much did the industries back hand to get this result?
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I've been saying that for two years, but you've been so busy with your extended victory lap I guess you didn't hear.
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And more importantly, last.
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Common sense?
Even if DVDFab (a good product) is shut down, there are plenty of other good products out there for ripping DVDs. What i need now is a good product to rip my blu-rays to iso files.
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More than once I've seen complaints to courts about foriegn entities not respecting US law and Judges giving it weight. Perhaps we really need to remind the judiciary that US law stops at the borders.
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Funny. That's what Achmed and Hassan were saying to their lawyers in Gitmo. Didn't work for the skinny guy off of the Maersk Alabama either.
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https://w2.eff.org/IP/Video/MPAA_DVD_cases/20010313_ny_dvdcca_amicus.html
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DVDFab needs our support.
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Easy solution to out-of-control Blu-ray restrictions
The industry wants me to pay for the Blu-ray disc, pay again to watch on my tablet and again to watch on my phone and if I want to watch again a Month later, pay them another time.
Clearly the industry is out of control. The most powerful tool we have is our purchasing power. If we all picked a week and simply refused to buy any Blu-ray product the industry would feel that impact.
If we all refused to buy any Blu-ray product the first week of every Month until the industry loosened the personal-use reformatting legal constraints, it would not take long for things to change,
We have the power to fix this, We just don't know it. Personally as long as DVDs are still being sold I am avoiding the Blu-ray discs just for that reason. I can easily make reformatted MP4s that work on Android tablets and the quality is perfectly acceptable.
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You're all missing the point of the seizure
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Re: You're all missing the point of the seizure
You can only tell whose DNS SERVER is requesting a domain. So you could definitively determine that TWC and Comcast are major copyright infringers via this method. :)
If you were thinking of redirecting that update server to a server that logs connection attempts, even this judge wasn't crazy enough to reassign the registration to the plaintiffs. They only killed it via this order so their registrar had to remove the destination.
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