News written by Jari Ketola (February, 2003)

321 Studios law firm (Keker & Van Nest) is looking for an actual user of the DVDXCopy software to file a motion on behalf of that user to intervene in 321 Studios' landmark fair use lawsuit.

The motion will ensure, that 321 Studios will be able to assert the First Amendment, fair use etc. rights of their customers and fellow DVD owners around the States.

The person chosen will have ZERO legal liability in the process, and will most likely be interviewed by the media -- perhaps world-wide -- as he or she will be acting as a poster "boy" or a "girl" for 321 Studios' fair use and First Amendment assertions.

Please read the announcement from Robert H Moore at the DVDXCopy support forum for more information. Also, if you are interested, please see the thread to send Mr. Moore a private message with your contact information.

Xiph.org reports that they have just signed an agreement with Digital Innovations, creators and producers of the Neuros Digital Audio Computer.

For the first time there will be Ogg Vorbis and Linux support from the manufacturer in a portable audio player.

The Neuros will hit the streets March 1st, and Vorbis playback and Linux synchronization support will be available in late May.

Source:
Xiph.org
NeurosAudio.com

Acaia Media Technologies, the company that has claimed to own patents to various technologies used in delivering content over the Internet, on Friday said it is going to court to test its case for the first time.

The company has been seeking licensing revenue from several adult entertainment companies for months. It has now filed a total of 39 patent infringement suits against those companies in federal court.

Acacia's patents cover such basic features of the Web as frames, hyperlinks and e-commerce shopping baskets. It is now seeking to obtain license fees from major sites using these features. They have also obtained patents that, according to their lawyers, cover all on-demand transmissions of compressed video and audio over the Internet, cable TV lines, satellite-links and wireless services.

Wouldn't it be fun using AfterDawn without the hyperlinks? We could just provide you with the URLs you can copy & paste to the address-line of your browser? Like this:

Source:
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-984698.html?tag=fd_top

Contrary to our earlier news story, the Finnish subtitle page FinSubs, which offered Finnish subtitles for movies, was not forced to close down by the Finnish copyright organization. The Finnish Translators Association (SKTL) contacted the page administrators, after they discovered that the page was offering subtitles ripped directly from DVDs. They never asked the subtitles translated by the users themselves to be removed.

However the administrator at FinSubs decided to contact the Finnish Copyright Council, and ask for guidelines for running the site. They discovered that not only direct rips, but also home-made translations from either the soundtrack or the original text, are forbidden by the Finnish copyright law. That discovery lead to the decision to remove all the subtitles from the page.

On Friday RIAA filed a brief in federal district court in Washington, in which they called the appeal made by Verizon earlier a brazen attempt by the telecommunications firm to "evade its responsibilities under the law."

According to Matthew Oppenheim, a senior vice president at the RIAA, Verizon is exaggerating the privacy risks caused by DMCA turbocharged subpoena process.

"In private conversations with the RIAA, Verizon has made it very clear that this is not a privacy issue," Oppenheim said. "They said they would be happy to turn over the names of some of their customers, as long as they don't have to turn over the names of a lot of their customers."

At issue in the RIAA's request is section 512 of the DMCA, which permits a copyright owner to send a subpoena ordering a "service provider" to turn over information about a subscriber. The service provider must promptly comply with that order, and no judge's approval is required first.

The fact that there's no legal process involved in the request, is what worries Verizon. And frankly it worries me too.

Source:
News.com

We've just added a DVD2One guide to our articles section. Even though the software is very easy to use, the process might not be obvious to all users. No need to worry about that anymore!

DVD2One lets you backup a DVD-movie on a single 4.36GB DVD-R disc by reducing the size of the movie in numerous ways, in addition to which it is extremely fast!

You can find the guide at:
https://www.afterdawn.com/articles/archive/dvd-9_to_dvd-r_with_dvd2one.cfm

You can download DVD2One from our software archive.