Altough 321 Studios has ceased operations their DVDxCopy software is still available. Earlier we reported that a store in the UK is still offering the software, including the DeCSS module, for sale, and now the software can also be downloaded from a Taiwanese website. Many websites also report that the software can be found on http://www.dvdxcopy2.com but at the moment the website seems to be down.
DVDxCopy has never been a real 321 Studios product. Several sources have told us that the company had lots of employees but none of them was able to write a line of code. The software actually licensed from an undislcosed German company. Daniel Derrow, the author of IFOedit was hired to help out on development and VSO-Software was responsible for the burning engine. (Before Gear and Ahead did not reach an agreement with 321) The 321 Studios people were all marketing people dedicated to sell the software. Of course also a decent amount of money was spend on lawyers.GristyMcFisty found his way to our news submit to inform us that TheInquirer has a story on the that site. They think that the the Taiwanese company stole the contents of the 321 site.
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The site was not up for long as this morning - when we had a look it was offline. However, we don't know why anyone would risk going to such a site. Ripped copies of the ripper are online and it is unlikely that 321 are going to do you for copyright infringement. |
However since April 2004 we already heard rumors that a Taiwanese site would be launched to sell DVDxCopy and we expect that former employees of 321 Studios have been preparing the move since then. We didn't and don't know the exact details of what is happening as the information that is given to us is different from person to person. We do know that a UK website (down now as well) still sells the software and that several 321 employees have been gone to new companies that are in the same building as where 321 Studios was located. Examples are NewStream Solutions and AudioExtract.
How much the company really cared about our rights remains to be seen, fact is that they have brought the fair use ideas to the attention of millions and have spend money on a risky business plan. Their software will probably remain available trough several channels and the sales people of 321 Studios will move on to other new and exciting things.
Source: CDFreaks
