provisions. The court first rejected 321 Studios’ argument that CSS was not an effective
technological measure because the CSS access keys were widely available on the Internet. The
court held that “this is equivalent to a claim that, since it is easy to find skeleton keys on the
black market, a deadbolt is not an effective lock to a door.”^1117
With respect to the specific prohibition of Section 1201(a)(2), 321 Studios argued that it
had the authority of the copyright holder to decrypt DVDs protected by CSS because its product
worked only on original DVDs, and the purchaser of a DVD has the authority of the copyright
holder to bypass CSS to play the DVD. The court rejected this argument, citing Universal City
Studios, Inc. v. Corley^1118 for the proposition that purchase of a DVD does not authorize the
purchaser to decrypt CSS, but rather only to view the content on the DVD. Only a licensed DVD
player has the authority of the copyright holder to decrypt CSS and 321 Studios did not hold a
CSS license.^1119
With respect to the specific prohibition of Section 1201(b)(1), 321 Studios argued that
CSS was not a copy control measure because it controlled only access to content and did not
control or prevent copying of DVDs. The court rejected this argument, noting that while it was
technically correct that CSS controlled access to DVDs, “the purpose of this access control is to
control copying of those DVDs, since encrypted DVDs cannot be copied unless they are
accessed.”^1120 The court also rejected 321 Studios’ argument that the primary purpose of DVD
Copy Plus was not to violate rights of a copyright holder since the software could be used for
many purposes that did not involve accessing CSS or that involved making copies of material in
the public domain or under fair use principles. In a potentially very broad holding, the court held
that the downstream uses of DVD Copy Plus, whether legal or illegal, were irrelevant to
determining whether 321 Studios itself was violating the DMCA.^1121 “It is the technology itself
at issue, not the uses to which the copyrighted material may be put. This Court finds, as did both
the Corley and Elcom courts, that legal downstream use of the copyrighted material by
customers is not a defense to the software manufacturer’s violation of the provisions of §
1201(b)(1).”^1122
321 Studios also argued that its software did not violate Section 1201(b)(2) because it
used authorized keys to decrypt CSS. The court ruled that, “while 321’s software does use the
authorized key to access the DVD, it does not have authority to use this key, as licensed DVD
players do, and it therefore avoids and bypasses CSS.”^1123
(^1117) Id. at 1095.
(^1118) 273 F.3d 429 (2d Cir. 2001).
(^1119) 321 Studios, 307 F. Supp. 2d at 1096.
(^1120) Id. at 1097.
(^1121) Id.
(^1122) Id. at 1097-98.
(^1123) Id. at 1098. This holding is contrary to that reached by the court in I.M.S. Inquiry Management Systems, Ltd. v.
Berkshire Information Systems, Inc., 307 F. Supp. 2d 521 (S.D.N.Y. 2004), discussed in the next subsection.