January 13, 2004
Mod-Chippers Win in Italian DMCA Case
IP Justice reports: “In an important victory for Italian consumer rights, an Italian court has rejected the seizure of Sony Playstation game consoles that use modified chips to permit unauthorized uses of the game systems. The case is one of the first to be brought in Italy under the new European Union Copyright Directive (EUCD), which is modeled on the controversial US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).”
The judge tells it like it is – Sony’s protections were not about preventing piracy, but about preventing competition, innovation, and consumer uses. He makes a distinction between “machine sellers” and copyright holders under the Italian DMCA, affirming implicitly that copyright law wasn’t meant to protect the former in this way. (I don’t know the law well enough to say without further reading if he got it right. See here for more on Italy’s DMCA.)
Filed by Derek Slater at 10:34 am under General news
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