Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Reimerdes
| Universal v. Reimerdes | |
|---|---|
| United States District Court for the Southern District of New York | |
| Full case name | Universal City Studios, Inc., Para-Mount Pictures Corporation, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc., Tristar Pictures, Inc., Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., Time Warner Entertainment Co., L.P., Disney Enterprises, Inc. and Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Plaintiffs, v. Shawn C. Reimerdes, Eric Corley a/k/a "Emmanuel Goldstein," Roman Kazan, and 2600 Enterprises, Inc., Defendants. |
| Date decided | August 17, 2000 |
| Citations | 111 F.Supp.2d 346 |
| Judge sitting | Lewis A. Kaplan |
| Case history | |
| Prior actions | 82 F.Supp.2d 211, |
| Subsequent actions | 273 F.3d 429 |
| Case holding | |
| Plaintiffs are entitled to appropriate injunctive and declaratory relief. | |
Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Reimerdes was the first test of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a United States federal law.
The plaintiffs, 8 movie studios, successfully sought an injunction against the distribution of DeCSS, a program capable of decrypting content protected using the Content Scramble System (a DRM scheme commonly used to protect DVDs.) It was produced and released without a license from DVD Copy Control Association (DVD CCA), the trade organization responsible for DVD copy protection. DeCSS was released in October 1999 on LiViD, a mailing list focused on producing programming tools and software libraries relevant to DVD use on Linux. The motion picture industry became aware of the existence of DeCSS later that same month and began litigation on a number of fronts.
On January 14, 2000, eight movie studios filed a lawsuit against Eric Corley (publisher of 2600: The Hacker Quarterly magazine), Shawn Reimerdes, Roman Kazan and 2600 Enterprises, Inc. The movie studios claimed that all three defendants, by making available DeCSS, were 'trafficking in circumvention devices', an illegal act under the DMCA. The studios sought injunctive relief in the form of a court order preventing the defendants from further publicizing or disseminating the DeCSS program, as well as damages.
In mid-January, shortly after the suit was filed, the Court granted a preliminary injunction barring defendants from posting DeCSS. This action allowed the court to prevent the further dissemination of DeCSS until the court could officially decide the legality of disseminating DeCSS. The court felt this precaution was necessary given that the movie studios supplied a reasonable argument that widespread dissemination of DeCSS would cause irreparable harm to their interests.
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