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EFF to Make Movies? Studios Ask Court to Name EFF a ''Competitor''
Posted by James Grimmelmann on Saturday, October 05 @ 21:05:31 EDT Copyright
The COPs (Copyright Owner Plaintiffs) in the ReplayTV case have asked the judge to have the EFF's lawyers barred from seeing a stunning 78% of the documents in the case. The justification? That the EFF is a "competitor" of the studios and shouldn't be allowed to see their trade secrets.

The Joint Stipulation (including both the COPs' motion for restriction and the EFF's reply) contains some unintentionally hilarious accusations. For example, on page 11, the EFF is described as "beyond the extreme end of the spectrum in its policy positions." Apparently, the EFF has negative wavelength. The request also states that:

Were these EFF lawyers to gain access through this litigation to "Highly Restricted" information about, for example, Plaintiff MGM's business plan for maximizing revenues from DVD distribution, or Plaintiff Time Warner's analysis of the technical weaknesses of a proposed content security system, that information would inform all of their future lobbying work for EFF.

Sounds good to LawMeme.

All joking aside, Hollywood is trying to shut down the EFF's political work in a pretty underhanded way. What if Thurgood Marshall had been kept off of Brown v. Board of Ed. because the NAACP was a "competitor" of segregationists? Even for the Mouse, this is a pretty low blow.

 
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"User's Login" | Login/Create an Account | 4 comments
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Re: EFF to Make Movies? Studios Ask Court to Name EFF a ''Competitor'' (Score: 1, Insighful)
by Anonymous (Name Withheld on Advice of Counsel) on Sunday, October 06 @ 11:17:54 EDT
>Were these EFF lawyers to gain access through this litigation to "Highly Restricted" information about, for example, Plaintiff MGM's business plan for maximizing revenues from DVD distribution, or Plaintiff Time Warner's analysis of the technical weaknesses of a proposed content security system, that information would inform all of their future lobbying work for EFF.

In other words, "we can't show you our monopoly pricing strategy 'cause then you'll tell congress on us"


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Re: EFF to Make Movies? Studios Ask Court to Name EFF a ''Competitor'' (Score: 1)
by MurphysLaw on Monday, October 07 @ 12:33:56 EDT
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As much as I respect the EFF, the court documents don't support the claim made in their press release and repeated in the article that the studios are claiming that the EFF is a "competitor". I've read the documents in question hosted by EFF. and nowhere do they claim that the EFF is a competitor. They claim that there is confidential and sensitive information in the documents released and that its contents will influence EFF's lobbying activities.


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