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Firm Develops Video Game Copying System
AP Business Writer Wednesday, February 11, 2004; 5:47 PM
ST. LOUIS -- A company whose DVD-copying software prompted copyright and piracy-related lawsuits from Hollywood is expanding into the realm of computer games, rolling out a system that lets game buyers make backup copies. With 321 Studios Inc.'s Games X Copy software, launched last weekend, users can burn PC games onto a hard drive, CD or DVD. The company says parents requested those options to safeguard original discs from rough-and-tumble handling by young gamers. "You no longer need to worry about scratches and broken or lost games," said Robert Moore, founder and president of 321, based in the St. Louis suburb of Chesterfield, Mo. "The software is easy enough to use that even the kids could make the backup and take it on vacation or to a friend's house -- and parents no longer have to worry about the original being damaged or lost." Games X Copy -- fetching $60 at www.dvdxcopy.com -- creates four "virtual drives" on a hard drive, letting the user play multi-disc games without the interruption of inserting different discs. No compression is used, making the backup a true one-to-one disc conversion. The company hopes to sidestep the cloud that has shadowed its DVD-copying software, which has sold hundreds of thousands of copies. The movie industry claims the software facilitates copyright infringement and piracy. "We feel we have a much stronger case with Games X Copy," said Julia-Bishop Cross, a 321 spokeswoman. "PC games are widely recognized as software, and with software there's a legal precedence set that you can make backup copies." Analysts agreed -- though there are some restrictions, including that consumers can't sell a backup copy unless they sell the original with it, said Keith Kupferschmid, vice president of intellectual property policy and enforcement for the Software and Information Industry Association. "We endorse and fully support the advancement of technology, and we think this is a great idea and innovation," Kupferschmid said. Still, "we want to make sure the software is being used for legitimate reasons. From our perspective, we'd be on watch on how (321 is) marketing it, how it's being used and whether it's being used to create whole new piracy," as in making copies of copies. Schelley Olhava, an analyst with market research firm IDC, suspects that 321's game-copying offering may have little impact, given already flat growth of the PC gaming market. She questioned whether consumers would need -- or take the effort -- to buy and download the 321 software at a time when "there are people already copying" without it. It's not immediately clear how much the PC gaming industry perhaps loses each year to pirates; by some estimates, piracy costs the software industry in general well into the billions. The Entertainment Software Association -- formerly the Interactive Digital Software Association -- said Wednesday it had no comment on Games X Copy. The DVD-copying program lets users make backups by defeating the copy protections encoded onto movie discs. Moore has said the process protects against piracy because it injects electronic barriers into copies, to keep them from being duplicated further, and inserts digital watermarks and identifying information that can trace the source of any file that's transmitted over the Internet. However, 321 is being sued by seven Hollywood movie studios that argue that DVD X Copy violates the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which bars the circumvention of anti-piracy measures. Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox filed a similar lawsuit in November in New York; 321 has motioned to have that case transferred to California, given the other cases there.
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