New DVD Software 'Bends' The Law

Court rulings have pulled the most popular software for copying DVD movies off the market, but a new program 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 $19.99 (£11).

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, the manufacturer's vice president, claimed in a telephone interview 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 Software 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, Thomas contended, since decryption software is widely available on the Internet anyway.

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," he said. "I don't see it as a particularly good defense."

In a written statement, 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," John G. Malcolm wrote.

123 Copy DVD website: 123copydvd.com.