The ongoing legal battle over the Real Networks’ ‘legal’ DVD copying software will be overseen by a judge who’s handled previous high-profile computer technology cases. Judge Marilyn Hall (pictured) has already decided the RealDVD software must be withdrawn from sale until its legal status is confirmed.

Hall has been involved in the legal profession for 35 years and has been a North California judge since 1980. Among her most high-profile cases, she ruled on the 2001 battle between the legal industry and Napster.

The biggest legal contention in that case was whether Napster was an internet service provider under the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Under that law, an ISP has some degree of protection preventing it from being held responsible for the actions of its customers.

However, Hall ruled Napster was not an ISP, and thus ordered that the company take responsibility for making sure none of its users shared copyrighted songs. That was so clearly unworkable that it forced Napster to change its business model to a legal subscription service. The ruling also led to the rise of true peer-to-peer technology in which there’s no central organization handling the files being shared.

Patel also has handled cases involving government restrictions on exporting encryption techniques (she ruled that source code is protected under the First Amendment) and a dispute between Target and the National Federation of the Blind (which established that firms are open to being sued for discrimination if their websites are not accessible by blind users).

The RealDVD case is likely to involve some complex legal decisions, most notably whether copying the CSS encryption on a disc is a clever loophole or an inherent breach of the relevant law’s aims. But it’s reassuring to know that the judge presiding over the case will have some understanding of technology.

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Entry was posted on Thursday, October 9th, 2008 at 2:22 pm under Legal, Piracy.

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