321 Studios v. Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios, Inc.
United States District Court for the Northern District of California
307 F. Supp. 2d 1085 (2004)
- Written by Tammy Boggs, JD
Facts
Many copyright-protected motion pictures were stored on digital video discs (DVDs) and distributed by entertainment studios (defendants) that owned the copyrights. The DVDs were encrypted in a fashion that sought to prevent unauthorized playback or reproduction. The company 321 Studios (321) (plaintiff) marketed and sold two products—DVD Copy Plus and DVD-X COPY—containing software and instructions for copying DVDs. The process of making copies involved software that decoded or decrypted data that had been copied from the original DVD. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) provided protections against circumventing encryption in a manner that would infringe a copyright. 321 filed an action against the entertainment studios seeking a declaratory judgment that the distribution of 321’s products did not violate the DMCA or, alternatively, that the DMCA was unconstitutional under the First Amendment. The entertainment studios filed a motion for partial summary judgment on the issue of the DMCA’s constitutionality.
Rule of Law
Issue
Holding and Reasoning (Illston, J.)
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