Aha! Now *I* have a strategy!

Since it has been adequately demonstrated that publishing copyrighted works enables violation of copyright, I propose to file suit under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act against the RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Google, and anyone else I can think of for knowingly, willingly, and deliberately enabling circumvention of copyright.

After all, if the copyrighted works were never published, copyright could never be violated! This is logic so simple that even a politician can understand it.

I will, of course, demand damages of a mere $500 per violation - and of course, one "violation" is equal to one track on a CD, vinyl record, or cassette tape (no one would eve copy tracks from an 8-track cartidge, so they're exempt), one title on a DVD, one file on a computer, or one Web page or link on a Web page, whichever is greater.

I think this will come to roughly US$50,000,000 per Windows PC...

I may even settle out of court for one percent of the statutory damages. After all, I can afford to be generous.

Damages to be paid to the EFF, of course.

What a silly lawsuit, thanks to the infamous Clinton's DMCA thing

.. which allows any small business to sue both same level competitors and bigger ones in a hope to get a lot of bucks...

Their claims that something they designed must be used or it's breaking the laws it's more than just flawed, it's really crazy. If any judges is going to allow these guys to get away with it and earn some easy bucks out of it then that could cause so many issues to any business in the world that the economy could collapse, really. Allowing these ones to win would mean that more and more will start claiming the same in any field and not just the IT one.

Funniest thing I've seen in a while

Of course, they don't expect this to actually fly. But what a fabulous publicity stunt.

-fred

crazzziest frivolous lawsuit ever...

what a crazzziest frivolous lawsuit...

MRT or whatever the name is...must be forced to pay all legal fees to Microsoft, Real, Apple etc...

I guess that shoud be enough punishment & a lesson for these nuts...

Publicity Stunt?

Sure, because nothing drives sales like taking all your potential customers to court... *cough*RIAA,MPAA*cough*

hurf

surely they should sue the artists because they make content that can be copied and thus piracy is their fault??

You gotta admit...

....They must have testicles of steel to even try to get this one to fly.

Plug the analogue hole

James Cleveland above says 'they should sue the artists because they make content'

The real problem is the 'analogue hole'. The analogue path between the artists mouth and the microphone is a weakness in the DRM technology system. It needs to be plugged. Placing a sock in it would help.

Having watched some of last night's Eurovision Song Contest, that method would certainly improve the output of many recording artists.

*Hard Rock Halluleja*

oh well, I don't think Finland will win agian though.

What's next?

Now that sounds great, suing them, because they haven't been using their product, hahaha, dream of any die hard money sucking businessman.

The obvious defense...

The easiest way for a company with deep pockets like Microsoft to deal with such a letter is to "arrange" for a crack of MRT's DRM to appear in the wild. If it's no longer effective (or at least no more effective than other DRMs), MRT's claims have no merit. Of course, this would require violating the DMCA in the process. It's a regular DMCA-22!

I actually applaud MRT for having the nerve to go through with this blatantly sarcastic critique of the DMCA. If a couple more companies got up enough pluck to make a statement like that, the whole system might actually come crashing down. Alas, I don't think they were joking...

Hello pot, have you met kettle?

They need to amend the cease and desist order and name themselves as well. They mention the Adobe Flash Player and if you go to this link http://www.mediarightstech.com/demo/demolarge.html they show a clip about their product. Yep, they use none other than Flash for their product demo.

I hope they win...

...it will remove any doubt in my mind, that world has gone quite insane. I shall confine it to the asylum, and get on with my life.

Way, IPR litigation went recursive!

This little infinite loop could suck all lawyer cycles before the Congress break switch trips, yoohoo!

Copyrighted

It's not a violation of the DMCA if the work being displayed isn't copyright. As such, if the demo on their website isn't copyrighted and doesn't contain any copyrighted materials, they would not be violating anything.