Finnish court rules DVD DRM 'ineffective,' chucks suits
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A judge in Helsinki has dismissed cases against two men charged with violating a European copyright directive, saying that the CSS technology the men are charged with hacking doesn't constitute much of a copy protection in the first place.
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A Belgian Internet service provider has appealed a ruling that it must block illegal file-sharing on its network in a case that tests two European Union directives concerning copyright and the extent of responsibility that ISPs have for transmitted content.
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DVDs will be harder to pirate thanks to new copy protection measures by Macrovision.
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A federal appeals court on Thursday delivered a stinging blow to the anti-piracy efforts of major movie studios and music companies, ruling that several online file-sharing software companies are not liable for ...
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Free software advocates rallied  against certain limits on copying music and films on Tuesday in  a global "Day against DRM" (Digital Rights Management), saying  consumers are robbed of their fair-use rights as entertainment  goes digital and online.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft downplayed Tuesday the impact of a new hack of its DRM technology, underlining the difficulties in erecting a long-lasting digital barrier against piracy. Doom9.org, a hacking forum, contained a post last Friday from "Divine Tao," presumably the hacker responsible, with download links for the updated version of FairUse4WM. The program, which was released last August, strips the DRM technology that limits how Windows Media files can be used and prevents illegal file sharing. "Microsoft is aware of the DRM issue, and the breach response team is verifying the circumvention," said a company statement. Windows Media DRM is used, for example, on songs sold through online song retailer Napster. Songs purchased from there can't copied to more than three computers, but there are no restrictions on how many times an individual song can be burned to a CD. Hacking activists argue they created FairUse4WM since they deserve broader freedom to move legitimately purchased content from device to device. Removal of the DRM, however, also allows the files to be copied without restriction or uploaded to file-sharing networks, which the recording industry believes has caused a massive sales decline. Microsoft has updated its DRM technologyÂ at least twice before to halt the effectiveness of FairUse4WM and said its DRM system is designed to support dynamic updates. The updates do not require a new release of Windows Media Player or the Windows Media Format Software Development Kit, used by developers to employ the DRM system, Microsoft said. Microsoft did not give a timetable as to when it may update Windows Media DRM to block the latest version of FairUse4WM. Nonetheless, the company acknowledged the DRM system's inherent vulnerability to hackers. "Microsoft has long stated that no DRM system is impervious to circumvention, a position Microsoft's content partners are aware of as well," the company said. Microsoft filed a lawsuitÂ in a district court in Seattle last September against 10 unnamed defendants for copyright infringement related to the release of FairUse4WM. The suit, however, was later dropped after the defendants could not be located. Record labels are increasingly considering removing DRM from their songs after years of lawsuits and legal wrangling have done little to reduce illegal file sharing. In April, EMI Group said it would sell songs on Apple's iTunes Music Store without DRM. The DRM-free songs cost about 20 percent more but are also encoded at 256Kbps, a higher quality than other songs with DRM.
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'NO copy protection - respect the music' stamped on !K7 discs
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A Russian court on Thursday threw out a criminal case against a school principal accused of installing pirated Microsoft software in school computers, calling the prosecution's case "trivial," a court official said.
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After months of hearings, Microsoft loses EU court battle and must strip Media Player, share code. Also: Federal judge refuses spammer's guilty plea.... Mobile companies dispute evidence that phone radiation damages DNA.... and more.
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Computer software should not be protected by copyright laws designed for music, literature and other creative works, according to a lawsuit filed in a U.S. court in San Francisco.
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BRUSSELS -- The European Commission has issued a formal set of objections to Microsoft Corp. and Time Warner Inc. taking control of ContentGuard Holdings Inc., a digital rights management (DRM) company, according to sources familiar with the case.
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The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has won a lawsuit against the operators of&#160;TorrentSpy.com, with the judge ruling in favor of the MPAA because the Web site operators tampered with evidence.In a ruling that could have implications for the privacy of Web site users, Judge Florence-Marie Cooper of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, ruled that TorrentSpy has infringed MPAA copyrights in a default judgment against the operators of the site.Cooper, in a ruling made public Monday, agreed with the MPAA that defendants Justin Bunnell, Forrest Parker, Wes Parker and Valence Media had destroyed evidence after another judge had ordered them to keep server logs, user IP (Internet Protocol) addresses and other information. TorrentSpy billed itself as a central location to find files distributed on BitTorrent P-to-P (peer-to-peer) networks.The defendants&#39; conduct was &quot;obstreperous,&quot; Cooper wrote in her decision. &quot;They have engaged in widespread and systematic efforts to destroy evidence and have provided false testimony under oath in a effort to hide evidence of such destruction,&quot; she wrote.TorrentSpy had located its servers in the Netherlands and argued that Dutch law protected them from having to turn over server logs and other information. In May, U.S. Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Chooljian ruled that TorrentSpy must preserve server data logs held in random access memory, or RAM.That decision was widely criticized as being an unreasonable standard because information held in RAM is temporary, but Cooper, in her new ruling, said TorrentSpy destroyed or altered several types of evidence, including user IP addresses, discussion forum postings about the trading of movies and moderator identities. &quot;A substantial number of items of evidence have been destroyed,&quot; she wrote. &quot;Defendants were on notice that this information would be of importance in this case.&quot;TorrentSpy&#39;s lawyer Ira Rothken said his client had concerns about protecting users&#39; privacy. TorrentSpy will appeal Cooper&#39;s decision, he said.&quot;It&#39;s not a ruling on the merits of the case,&quot; he said. &quot;One person&#39;s willful destruction of evidence is another person&#39;s willful attempt to comply with customer privacy policies.&quot;The ruling, if it stands, could expose private information about Web site users in many civil lawsuits, Rothken added. &quot;This doesn&#39;t apply only to TorrentSpy, but to anyone who operates a Web site,&quot; he said.A ruling on damages in case will happen at a later date.The MPAA, which filed the case against TorrentSpy in February 2006, applauded Cooper&#39;s ruling. &quot;The court&#39;s decision ... sends a potent message to future defendants that this egregious behavior will not be tolerated by the judicial system,&quot; John Malcolm, the MPAA&#39;s executive vice president and director of worldwide antipiracy operations, said in a statement. &quot;The sole purpose of TorrentSpy and sites like it is to facilitate and promote the unlawful dissemination of copyrighted content. TorrentSpy is a one-stop shop for copyright infringement.&quot;
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft suffered a humiliating legal defeat Monday when it lost a court appealÂ to overturn the European Commission's 2004 antitrust ruling against it. The decision took most observers by surprise. The Court of First Instance, Europe's second highest court based in Luxembourg, sided squarely with Europe's top antitrust regulator on the two central issues in the case. Most commentators expected a mixed verdict. While the details of the lengthy court decision are still being examined in their minutiae, some consequences are already clear: The ruling pulls a legal rug from under Microsoft's strategy of bundling software onto its Windows operating system, providing a powerful legal reference point for any future antitrust litigation against the company, and it strengthens the Commission's authority, especially when dealing with antitrust abuse in the fast-moving information technology industry. The Commission was right to rule against Microsoft's strategy of bundling its Media Player application into the Windows operating system, the court concluded, after three years deliberation. Similarly, Microsoft acted illegally by refusing to share the required interoperability information needed by rivals to build server operating systems that work smoothly with Windows, the court said. Microsoft's most senior lawyer, Brad Smith said the court decision was "disappointing." He hasn't decided whether to appeal it to the top court, the Court of Justice. If Microsoft does this, it can only dispute points of law, not facts established in Monday's ruling. Smith said Monday's court ruling has important implications for Microsoft's strategy of bundling together a range of applications with the Windows operating system. This strategy has proved effective in the past. Microsoft eclipsed Netscape in the mid 1990s when it bundled in its Internet Explorer application into the operating system. And RealPlayer dominated the market for streaming media applications until Microsoft started bundling its Media Player into Windows in 1999. The Commission initially hoped to save RealPlayer from Netscape's fate by ordering Microsoft in 2004 to sell a second unbundled version of Windows, but it was too late. The market had tipped irreversibly in favor of Microsoft even before the 2004 ruling. The Commission's remedy to restore competition to the streaming media software market in 2004 was to order Microsoft to sell a second version, later dubbed Windows N, with Media Player stripped out. But the remedy has had no impact on the market. Nevertheless, winning the bundling argument in court was the most important victory of the day for the Commission, and for other companies that believe they suffered from Microsoft's unfair bundling strategy, according to Commission officials and lawyers following the case. "This is an important precedent, not just for this particular product on this particular market," said Competition commissioner Neelie Kroes at a press conference Monday. There isn't a queue of complainants lined up, she said, but she added that "they are welcome." Thomas Vinje, legal counsel for the European Committee for Interoperable Systems, (ECIS) a Commission ally in the case, said the Commission's authority to regulate competition in the IT industry has been strengthened by the court ruling. "It has strengthened their hand," he said, adding that he will encourage the Commission to move swiftly ahead with the antitrust complaint ECIS filed to the European regulator two years ago. However, he dismissed claims made during the day that the ruling would be a threat for all successful companies. "The Microsoft case is very rare in that it concerns a super-dominant company," he said. "The Commission may be emboldened by the endorsement of the court to take action against other companies in the IT industry -- There may be issues to be addressed concerningÂ Google's dominance of search, or with its plans to take over DoubleClick, but they bear little resemblance to the specific issues in the Microsoft case. The only real implications from the Microsoft case are for Microsoft itself," he added.
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A US court says the makers of two leading file-sharing programs are not legally liable for the songs, movies and other copyright works swapped online by their users, in a stinging blow to the entertainment industry.
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Executives from Nokia and Philips published an open letter today calling for the European Commission to consider scaling back, if not eliminating, imposing levies on digital recording media and playback devices, including DVRs and MP3 players. But the alternative may be a hard sell: increased DRM.
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Europe's top court on Tuesday dealt a blow to the defenders of authors' rights, upholding a Spanish Internet provider's refusal to reveal the identity of customers sharing music downloads.
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(InfoWorld) - Just because three major online music retailers bind their music stores to specific portable players doesn't make it acceptable, a Norwegian consumer group leading the charge against Apple's DRM (digital rights management) policy says. "ITunes Music Store and others are unfair to consumers no matter how many download services follow the proprietary approach," wrote Torgeir Waterhouse, a senior advisor at The Norwegian Consumer Council, in response to a letter written by Apple CEO Steve Jobs andÂ posted on the Apple Web siteÂ on Tuesday. Jobs examined why DRM exists and discusses alternatives to the current set-up in his open response to calls for Apple to allow users to buy songs from the iTunes store and play them on any device. Norway's consumer representative hasÂ threatened legal action against AppleÂ for violating Norwegian law by limiting iTunes customers to playing their music only on iPods. Consumer groups in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, France, and Germany haveÂ joined Norway's complaintÂ against Apple. Jobs points out that Microsoft and Sony also sell music that can only be played on their players, supporting a model that serves customers well with choice and a continuing stream of innovative products. He also suggests that groups like Waterhouse's "redirect their energies" toward convincing the music labels to sell music without DRM, technology that aims to restrict how buyers can copy or use the music. The four biggest record labels forced Apple to employ a proprietary DRM system as a condition of the agreement that allows Apple to sell their music, he said. Ideally, he said, the labels wouldn't require DRM. "This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat," Jobs wrote. While Waterhouse agrees that the record companies carry some fault for the situation, the iTunes music store and others like it are ultimately responsible. "They're still the company that's selling music to the consumers and are responsible for offering a fair deal according to Norwegian law," he said. Still, with his letter, Jobs' appears to have stirred up some additional pressure on the record labels to change their DRM policies. EMusic.com Inc., which claims to be the second largest music download site, only sells DRM-free music from thousands of independent labels. But the site would like be able to sell music from the four biggest labels. "We are hopeful the remaining four will one day join [the independent labels] by licensing their complete catalogs and reap the benefits of consumer demand," David Pakman, president and CEO of eMusic, wrote in a response to Jobs' letter. Even though Jobs didn't hint that a solution might be impending, Waterhouse appeared to see a glimmer of hope. "If this means that Apple is willing to the kick the lock in technology from the [iTunes/iPod] combination this is really good news -- news that should be put into action as soon as possible to bring us all one important step closer to a well functioning digital society," he wrote.