to Section 1201(a) when its requirements are established. The court awarded statutory damages
of $200 per violation for 324,901 violations (at least 307,401 receivers and 17,500 iHubs sold),
for a total award of $64,980,200.^905
e. Dish Network v. AlejandriIn Dish Network v. Alejandri,^906 the court granted summary judgment to the plaintiffs
that the defendants’ sale of free-to-air receivers together with referral to service providers who
could program them using the IKS piracy technology to receive Dish Network signals without
payment of subscriber fees violated Section 1201(a)(1)(A) of the DMCA. The court noted that
the defendants’ equipment used for unlawful circumvention, which had been impounded, would
be disposed of by the U.S. Marshals’ Service upon order of the court at the conclusion of the
proceedings.^907 The court also found a violation of Section 605(a) of the Communication Act
(47 U.S.C. § 605(a)) and awarded statutory damages under that Act. The court did not award
statutory damages under the DMCA – although the court’s opinion does not make clear, it
appears that the plaintiffs did not seek statutory damages under the DMCA.^908
(xii) Realnetworks v. DVD Copy Control Association.In Realnetworks, Inc. v. DVD Copy Control Association, Inc.,^909 the DVD Copy Control
Association (DVDCCA) brought claims alleging that distribution of Realnetworks’ RealDVD
product violated the anti-trafficking provisions of the DMCA. DVDCCA licenses the Content
Control System (CSS) technology, which combines multiple layers of encryption with an
authentication process to protect the content on DVDs. CSS requires that a DVD drive lock
upon insertion of a CSS-protected DVD and prevent access to its contents until a CSS-authorized
player engages in an authentication procedure, akin to a secret handshake, to establish mutual
trust. It also requires that players authenticate themselves to DVD drives to establish mutual
trust, both to unlock the DVD and gain access to its protected video contents and also separately
to gain access to keys stored in secure areas of the DVD, which then decrypt and descramble the
DVD content. The process of authentication with the DVD drive, and subsequent content
decryption, will fail if a DVD is not in the DVD drive. Finally, the CSS technology creates a
system whereby content on a DVD may be played back only in decrypted and unscrambled form
from the physical DVD and not any other source, such as a computer hard drive.^910
The RealDVD product provided a variety of functions, including playing back DVDs
placed in a computer’s DVD drive, looking up information about the DVD from Internet
databases, providing links to various information web sites relevant to the chosen DVD, and –
(^905) Id. at 22, 24-25 & 40-41.
(^906) 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 106839 (D. Puerto Rico July 30, 2012).
(^907) Id. at 10-14, 21-25 & 28-29.
(^908) Id. at *16-21, 25-28.
(^909) 641 F. Supp. 2d 913 (N.D. Cal. 2009).
(^910) Id. at 919-20.