Hollywood takes more firms to court
16-05-2003
by Matthew Clark

The big movie studios in Hollywood have turned their gripes with the sellers of DVD copying software into a legal dispute.

On Thursday in New York, Paramount Pictures and Twentieth Century Fox Film filed for an injunction in a federal court to stop five firms -- Internet Enterprises, RDestiny, HowtocopyDVDs.com, DVDBackupbuddy.com and DVDSqueeze.com -- from selling software used to copy DVDs.

Even more notable is a case in San Francisco where seven movie studios are involved in a court action that argues that DVD X Copy and DVD Copy Plus software, made by Missouri-based 321 Studios, should be judged illegal because it violates copyright law. The firms involved in the case include divisions of Sony, AOL Time Warner Walt Disney, Vivendi Universal, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Pixar Animation Studios and Saul Zaentz. The studios' case is being carried out under the umbrella of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).

The studios' position, which is clearly reminiscent of the position taken up by the recording industry over music rights, is based on the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which is designed to protect artists from having their work illegally copied and distributed.

Last year, in a pre-emptive suit, 321 Studios sought to get a ruling from a federal judge that deemed its software legal. The company says that DVD X Copy and DVD Copy Plus allow consumers to make personal copies of DVDs in the event that their original copy is damaged or destroyed. Making such copies, the firm says, is allowed under the "fair use" provisions in US copyright law. 321 also says that, so far, it has sold about 500,000 versions of its software.

On Thursday, Judge Susan Illston of the US District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco heard arguments from both the studios and 321 and adjourned to consider the case. Currently, it remains unclear when Judge Illston will issue her ruling.

"At the end of the day, this is not a lawsuit against consumers or about copyright infringement. It is a lawsuit about a company that traffics in an illegal product," said Russell Frackman, attorney for the MPAA said in a Reuters report.

The studios have argued that if this software is allowed to be sold and distributed, they will lose millions in revenues, resulting in thousands of lost jobs, because people will be able to make perfect copies of movies on DVD. Worse still, the movie studios say, people will be able to distribute the films on the Net, where they could be downloaded and burned on to a DVD for practically no cost at all.