EMediaLive.com: 321 Studios Calls for "Five Days of Protest"

321 Studios is kicking off Fight for Fair Use week, a week-long campaign to encourage consumers to fight back against the "fair use paradox" that they say has stripped away Americans' fair use rights in "the digital future." Northern District Court of California Judge Susan Illston created this so-called paradox on February 20, 2004, when she sided with a group of Hollywood movie studios and ruled that 321 Studios violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by including a DVD movie encryption descrambler--called a ripper--in its award-winning DVDXCOPY backup software.

While the ruling clearly acknowledges that there are legal backup uses that can be made of DVDs, it declared illegal the only commercially available software that, according to 321, allows Americans to exercise those rights.

321 Studios (321) is now distributing and selling "ripper-free," or "RF" versions of DVDXCOPY through the company's Web site and nationwide retail channels. 321 Studios has destroyed tens of thousands of units of the original DVDXCOPY, the company says, while at the same time building thousands of units of the new, ripper-free version that are now for sale.

Each day of Fair Use Week, 321 Studios will encourage consumers to contact a different target audience to express their feelings about the court decision, including movie studio executives, members of Congress and the media. Consumers can send messages through www.ProtectFairUse.org, a Web site sponsored by 321 Studios that provides information and links resources.