A federal court has ruled that privately held 321 Studios must stop making software that allows users to copy DVDs, handing Hollywood’s major movie studios a victory in their ongoing battle against copyright piracy.
“This court enjoins plaintiff 321 Studios from manufacturing, distributing, or otherwise trafficking” in the software, Judge Susan Illston of U.S. District Court in San Francisco, wrote in her ruling.
A spokesperson for privately held 321 Studios was not immediately available to comment.
At stake in the legal battle between 321 and Hollywood’s studios were potentially billions of dollars in lost revenue if DVD copying software such as 321’s DVD Copy Plus and DVD X Copy were allowed to be sold, the studios had argued.
The studios and their trade group, The Motion Picture Association of America, claim the industry loses as much as $3 billion a year from the copying of analog videotapes.
The film industry is worried it could lose even more money if digital copies of movies are allowed to proliferate more widely on black markets and on the Internet.
The case had tested the limits of 1998’s Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which protects copyright holders from illegal copying of movies, music, books and TV shows, among other creative content.
321 Studios had argued its software protected DVD owners because it gave them the ability to make copies in case their original DVDs were destroyed and the company claimed the DMCA allowed the copying DVDs if copies were designed for the sole use of the owners.
The studios had countered that 321’s software circumvented special software encryption codes that protected the DVDs from being copied and therefore violated the DMCA.
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