US court rulings have pulled the most popular software for copying DVD movies off the market, but a new program, already on sale at CompUSA and Wal-Mart is trying to get around these rulings and still let users duplicate copy-protected discs.
The new software, called 123 Copy DVD, sells for as little as US$19.99. Out of the box, it won't copy the vast majority of commercial DVDs, which are protected by encryption. However, the manufacturer, also called 123 Copy DVD, has a Web site with a link to another site that contains a piece of decryption software. Users can easily download that patch, which allows the program to copy any disc.
Steve Thomas, vice president of the manufacturer, said that the site with the decryption software is unaffiliated with 123 Copy DVD.
But that claim is contradicted by Web site registration records, which show that both 123 Copy DVD's site and the site with the patch are owned by the same company, Bling Software Ltd, which has a Gibraltar mailing address.
Reached later, Thomas said he had been unaware that Bling Soft-ware owned the site with the patch. He identified Bling Software as 123 Copy DVD's parent company.
Federal judges in March ordered another company, 321 Studios Inc, to stop marketing its best-selling DVD-copying software. That was a victory for Hollywood studios, which contended that DVD-copying products violate the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. That law bars circumvention of anti-piracy measures used to protect DVDs and other technology.
Since those rulings, 321 Studios has shipped retooled versions of its DVD-copying products, removing the software component required to descramble movies.
Thomas said that because 123 Copy DVD does not ship with decryption software, it does not violate the law.
"Our position is that it complies with the Millennium Copyright Act," he said.
Linking to the patch doesn't make much of a difference, he contended, since decryption software is widely available on the Internet.
Bruce Sunstein, an intellectual-property lawyer for Bromberg & Sunstein, a Boston-based law firm, said that even if the Web site with the patch were not affiliated with 123 Copy DVD, the manufacturer is on very shaky legal ground by providing a link to it.
"If you aid somebody in circumventing copyright protection, then you've done the bad thing," Sunstein said. "I don't see it as a particularly good defense."
In a written statement, John Malcolm, the anti-piracy director at the Motion Picture Association of America noted that every maker of DVD-copying software has claimed that its product was legal.
"We have now sued over a dozen persons/companies offering these packages and in every instance, every court has deemed the product to be illegal," he wrote.
PROVOCATIVE: Chinese Deputy Ambassador to the UN Sun Lei accused Japan of sending military vessels to deliberately provoke tensions in the Taiwan Strait China denounced remarks by Japan and the EU about the South China Sea at a UN Security Council meeting on Monday, and accused Tokyo of provocative behavior in the Taiwan Strait and planning military expansion. Ayano Kunimitsu, a Japanese vice foreign minister, told the Council meeting on maritime security that Tokyo was seriously concerned about the situation in the East China and South China seas, and reiterated Japan’s opposition to any attempt to change the “status quo” by force, and obstruction of freedom of navigation and overflight. Stavros Lambrinidis, head of the EU delegation to the UN, also highlighted South China Sea
SILENCING CRITICS: In addition to blocking Taiwan, China aimed to prevent rights activists from speaking out against authoritarian states, a Cabinet department said The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday condemned transnational repression by Beijing after RightsCon, a major digital human rights conference scheduled to be held in Zambia this week, was abruptly canceled due to Chinese pressure over Taiwanese participation. This year’s RightsCon, the world’s largest conference discussing issues “at the intersection of human rights and technology,” was scheduled to take place from tomorrow to Friday in Lusaka, and expected to draw 2,600 in-person attendees from 150 countries, along with 1,100 online participants. However, organizers were forced to cancel the event due to behind-the-scenes pressure from China, the ministry said, expressing its “strongest condemnation”
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, said it expects its 2-nanometer (2nm) chip capacity to grow at a compound annual rate of 70 percent from this year to 2028. The projection comes as five fabs begin volume production of 2-nanometer chips this year — two in Hsinchu and three in Kaohsiung — TSMC senior vice president and deputy cochief operating officer Cliff Hou (侯永清) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Silicon Valley, California, last week. Output in the first year of 2-nanometer production, which began in the fourth quarter of last year, is expected to
Taiwan’s economy grew far faster than expected in the first quarter, as booming demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications drove a surge in exports, spilling over into investment and consumption, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. GDP growth was 13.69 percent year-on-year during the January-to-March period, beating the DGBAS’ February forecast by 2.23 percentage points and marking the most robust growth in nearly four decades, DGBAS senior official Chiang Hsin-yi (江心怡) told a news conference in Taipei. The result was powered by exports, which remain the backbone of Taiwan’s economy, Chiang said. Outbound shipments jumped 51.12 percent year-on-year to
RSS