Tag archive: digital millennium copyright act

The Electronic Frontier Foundation scored a big victory last year when it successfully petitioned the U.S. Copyright Office to protect smartphone jailbreakers and video remixers with exemptions under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Now the EFF is looking to expand the scope of those exemptions with some new requests that protect (or further protect) the “jailbreaking” of smartphones, tablets and gaming consoles, allowing them… Read More

Regulating the Internet is turning out to be much more difficult than the federal government anticipated. The E-PARASITE legislation, a bill proposed by Congress that was formerly known as the Senate-backed PROTECT IP Act, has been making the rounds and will attempt to punish copyright infringement–as well as toy with its definitions to a harrowing degree. As one law blog put it, “It’s as though George Lucas came out with the director’s… Read More

Facebook’s protocol for handling copyright infringement is being criticized after many tech blogs have had their Facebook pages abruptly taken down. Ars Technica, RedmondPie and Neowin are some of the sites that are saying they are victims of DMCA abuse. The DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) is a piece of legislation  that cracks down and heightens penalties on Internet copyright infringement. The fact that Facebook responds to claims… Read More

In the first trial of its kind, Matthew Crippen, 28, is being taken to court today for modifying Xbox 360s. Crippen was arrested in August 2009 after he was paid to install chips in consoles in order for users to play pirated games. An undercover agent approached Crippen and offered $80 for the service, and recorded a conversation in which Crippen admitted to modifying three Xbox 360s a week. According to the prosecution, Crippen was running a… Read More

Back in 1998, Senator John McCain voted for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. 10 years later he’s a victim of it. YouTube has pulled ads for the McCain Presidential campaign after Fox News has claimed they illegally use copyrighted material. And that’s sparked a flurry of letters between the McCain campaign and YouTube. The campaign has asked YouTube to keep the clips online while it’s determined whether the… Read More

On Monday, RealNetworks announced a public beta of their Harmony software, a technology that allows consumers to listen to legally downloaded, digitally protected music on 100′s of portable devices, including Apple's popular iPod. The significance of this announcement is that before Harmony, there was no way of playing, for instance, music downloaded from Real's Music Store on an iPod. Apple responded to that… Read More

The lawsuit, filed in New York by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. and Paramount Pictures Corp., marks the first time a movie company has sued a retailer of the forbidden software by 321 Studios Inc. Other retailers voluntarily halted sales of the software after federal judges in New York and California – at Hollywood's behest – ordered 321 of suburban St. Louis to stop making and marketing it.… Read More

The PlayFair project was taken down on April 16 by Sarovar after receiving a cease and desist letter from Apple Computer Corp. The Indian organization Sarovar is a facility for free software creators and provides the same facilities as the Sourceforge project, based in the US, does. PlayFair allows people to play music on non-Apple authorised hardware, provided an authorised key is available. It removes the Digital Rights Management… Read More

DVD software provider 321 Studios suffered another legal setback Wednesday when a New York judge granted a preliminary injunction barring the company from manufacturing, distributing, or otherwise trafficking in software that allows users to copy DVDs. U.S. District Judge Richard Owen, in case 1:03-cv-08970-RO, sided with Paramount Pictures and Twentieth Century Fox Film in ordering 321 Studios to stop distributing products that… Read More

Observers had been hoping that the judge would give definitive answers to challenges to the constitutionality of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The Act has been cited by trade associations such as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) in disputes over copying. US District Judge Susan Illston did not rule whether DVD copying software was a legitimate method of making back-ups of films purchased by the user, or… Read More

Chesterfield, Mo.-based 321 Studios has sold about a half-million copies of its software titles that allow the user to make backup copies of DVD movies to blank DVDs or CDs. Hollywood alleges the company's software functions in a way that is prohibited by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, signed into law by Hollywood-friendly former President Clinton. The DMCA prohibits the circumvention of technological measures put in… Read More

“CEA strongly opposes the state piracy laws being promoted by MPAA. If enacted, these measures would have a profound and destructive impact on consumers' rights to use lawfully acquired content for noncommercial purposes. The proposed laws also would outlaw the manufacturing and use of many existing consumer electronics products and hinder future technological developments. “These bills are wolves in sheep's… Read More

Championing the public's rights to use and innovate with media, EFF is filing a friend-of-the-court brief supporting 321 Studios' challenge to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). EFF, along with co-signers Public Knowledge and Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, argue that tools such as 321′s DVD X-Copy, which enables a user to make a personal backup copy or excerpt of a DVD, must be lawful because… Read More