In a ruling that does not bode well for anti-piracy advocates, the Paris Court of Appeals ordered local DVD vendors to remove copies of David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive from store shelves this week, claiming that copy-prevention software on the DVD violates privacy rights of consumers.
The suit was filed by consumer advocacy group UFC-Que Choisir after a man who’d rented the film found that he was not able to copy the film from DVD to VHS so that he could watch the film at his mother’s house.
Pundits have already gone on record to proclaim the ruling could prove to be a major setback for the DVD industry. “This ruling means that 80 percent of DVDs now on the French market are equipped with illegal mechanisms,” said Julien Dourgnon, a spokesman for UFC-Que Choisir.
But, while mainstream DVD companies may soon be sweating bullets over potential losses, the adult industry may have nothing to worry about. “The DVD copy protection that they struck down is one that is not generally used by most companies, including ours, so it is not that big a deal,” Keith Webb, Vice President of gay adult giant Titan Media, told AVNOnline.com earlier today. Though Titan has been a proponent of anti-piracy legislation, Webb went on to say, “The use of anti-copying protection on DVDs is waste of time and is not effective. If someone wants to make a copy of a DVD they are going to find a way to do it and nothing we can do is going to stop them.
“This decision does not have any big impact on piracy or on the adult business,” Webb continued. “In five to seven years there will be no DVDs and everything will be DRM'd files sold online or sent directly into people’s homes. DRM-protected files cannot be copied, so this will not be an issue.”
