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May 11, 2007

legal

Now it’s just ridiculous

Posted May. 11, ’07, 10:30 AM PT by Kate Marshall
Category | Legal

norwegianwood.jpgI think my jaw actually fell open when I read my newsreader last night: Media Rights Technologies has filed a Cease and Desist letter against a bevy of bigwigs in the technology industry: Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, and Real. The charge? Products like the iPod, RealPlayer, and Vista violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The catch that made me shake my head in angry disbelief?

MRT’s X1 SeCure Recording Control has proven effective against stream ripping, the company said in a statement, and these companies have been “actively avoiding the use of MRT’s technologies.”
Let me first pry my forehead off my desk (ouch) and then examine this again: MRT makes a technology process that prevents people from ripping digital media streams. Fine. Good for them. Apple, at least, does not use this fancy-pants technology in their products. So MRT wants to pursue action against a company because said company isn’t using its products? You’re kidding me, right? This is all some stupid prank cooked up by Dan and Derik to mess with my head, right? I….I’m stunned. Speechless. This boggles the mind so much that I just gave myself a migraine headache. I’m half-tempted to file a Cease and Desist against Media Rights Technologies for inducing that pulsing, throbbing pain in my temple. Kate needs to lie down now for a little while.

[Via Playlist]

[Edited 7:12 PM EST to fix link]


4 Comments

John said:

I can't believe they would let anyone file such an idiotic lawsuit! So now every company can sue each other for not using there products?
That's what this sounds to me. It has nothing to do with digital copy prevention. And apple already has that, its called fairplay.

May 11, 2007 11:51 AM
Lee Hauser said:

When I read this last night, I saw animportant point in the complaint that you didn't mention. If I remember it right, MRT is suing under the theory that the DRM of the companies being sued had been broken (true), and to be in compliance with the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, those companies apparently need to implement unbroken DRM (which, apparently, MRT thinks it has). This seems to me to mean that, under the DMCA, if you use DRM, you have to use DRM that works. I wonder what happen's when MRT's DRM is broken, if it hasn't been already.

As I mentioned, that's the way I understood it from what I read last night. Yeah, it's still stupid. So's DRM.

May 11, 2007 3:03 PM
33Nick said:

Yes, you've nailed it on the head. How many times do we see manipulations like these?

It's getting to the point where everyone is turned off from these shenanigans, which is scary. A whole generation of people who are so disgusted with corporate America's low ethics and you have an open road for disaster.

Stories like these just make us scratch our head and wonder why. A company's product is not used, so you bother everyone until it's used? Way to goo for quality products attract people!

We need a change. I would love to see a bunch of companies sprouting out with extremely ethical people who remembered why they created what they created instead of being debilitated at the thought of money.

May 12, 2007 6:27 PM
spiderbat said:

I'm scared! Next time, micro$oft will sue me for not using their products!

May 13, 2007 3:57 AM

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