321 studios in trouble again
p2pnet.net News:- 321 Studios is in trouble again. Three top games publishers, one of them in the music business as well, have lodged suits in in New York State against 321 claiming its Games X Copy suite is in violation of the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act).
The companies are Electronic Arts, Atari and – Vivendi Universal Games.
Hollywood forced 321 owner and ceo Bob Moore to pull his DVD X Copy back-up app with a built-in ripper off the market, saying it breaches copyright laws.
This has meant major staff cut backs.
The three game companies say Games X Copy allows people to bypass anti-pirate encryption codes. “[...] a typical top video game costing an average of $5 million to $10 million,” Douglas Lowenstein, president of the Entertainment Software Association is quoted as saying in a Bloomberg News story here.
The DMCA says products specifically meant to circumvent copy protection are illegal.
However, the Big Five record labels are said to be looking for a way to let people make a limited number of copies of their music. And that’s precisely what 321 claims its products are for, declares Moore.
“321 Studios claims that its product is designed for that purpose, rather than for use by pirates – with its website stating that it ‘opposes piracy of any kind – and indeed, Games X Copy does go to some lengths to prove that it isn’t a piracy tool, with electronic watermarks embedded on each disk created allowing pirate copies to be traced back to the originator, codes which prevent the copies from themselves being copied, and electronically embedded disclaimers on all backup copies of DVDs,” says a GI story here.
