DVD cracker may be sued in Hollywood
The Supreme Court granted a stay of a California Supreme Court ruling that would have prevented Hollywood from suing a coder who posted the code for secure DVD technology on the Web in 1999. As I predicted, Elcomsoft was a prelude to another suit, this time aimed at person within the U.S. who can be associated with the distribution of DRM-cracking code that is being actively circulated. Elcomsoft had stopped distributing its product when warned off by Adobe. Matthew Pavlovich, the defendant in the pending lawsuit, fits the profile, having posted the code for the Content Scrambling System used in most DVDs.
The case had been relegated to either a Texas or Indiana court by the California ruling. If Hollywood wins, the lawsuit might be heard by a jury of movie-making peers.
In this case, the code is not copyrighted, so the Digital Millennium Copyright Act does not apply, and the punishment Hollywood is seeking will be inflicted through civil penalties for violating trade secrets owned by the DVD Copy Control Association.
Posted by Mitch Ratcliffe at December 31, 2002 01:03 PM | TrackBack