Jan Gutter of AMD Deutchland told tecChannel that although Athlon XP will seep down into lower price brackets low-cost Duron would still figure among AMD's offerings into next year.
CEO Sanders suggested in and teleconference last week that the Athlon would have a presence in all price brackets, leaving no room for the cut-price Duron.
AMD's own roadmaps say the Duron will be produced "as long as the market requires it". Consumers soon finding little price differential between low-speed Athlon XPs and the cut-down Duron, will likely choose the former.
Gutter suggests price cutting on XP chips will be slower than many - possibly including Sanders - predict.
News source: The Inquirer
The suit is essentially a preemptive strike against the movie industry trade association, the Motion Picture Association of America. The MPAA has recently asked the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice to investigate several firms, including CopyMyDVD.com and DVD Wizard. The MPAA contends such products violate the DMCA by circumventing copy protection, called Contents Scramble System (CSS), used on DVD media.
The MPAA declined comment on 321 Studios' action. But a spokesperson maintains that DVD copying runs afoul of the DMCA.
"Hollywood studios had [321 Studios] in their crosshairs," says Fred von Lohmann, senior intellectual property attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which opposes the DMCA. It was to 321 Studios' advantage to file a complaint before the MPAA hauled it off to court, von Lohmann says.
"Why should Hollywood dictate to the
American people what they can do with DVDs that they have
legally purchased?" asks 321 Studios' Moore. "I'm all for
protecting the copyrights of artists, but I'm against laws
that prohibit free speech, fair use, and crimp innovation."
Attorney Daralyn Durie with Keker & Van Nest, representing 321 Studios, says she will argue a "Betamax defense" on her client's behalf. Her reference is to the motion picture industry's efforts to ban Sony's Betamax VCRs because they could be used to make illegal copies of movies. But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1984 that, although some VCR uses infringe on copyright, a ban is not justified because the technology has sufficient non-infringing uses. Likewise, Durie maintains, DVD Copy Plus has legitimate uses that shield it from the DMCA.
DVD Copy Plus doesn't copy DVDs exactly. It makes a lesser-quality video (about equal to digital cable TV), and copies accompanying audio in SVCD format, Moore says. One DVD can be burned on normal CDs and played back on a PC or many models of DVD players.
DVD Copy Plus doesn't copy any of a DVD's extra material, like subtitles and bonus clips. 321 Studios did not create the software that performs the actual copying, but uses tools "freely available" on the Internet, Moore says. That's another reason he believes the company does not violate the DMCA.
The lawsuit is sure to turn up the volume on a growing debate between consumer electronics vendors and copyright owners over use of digital music and video. Consumers have also voiced concerns over perceived and proposed restrictions on making backup copies and compilation audio CDs of material they have purchased.
The DMCA is already being invoked in another pending case. The Russian software company ElcomSoft faces criminal charges that it violated the DMCA by distributing a program that can crack copy protection on Adobe e-books.
"There is still some doubts to whether the DMCA is constitutional and whether there are any limits to where it can it be applied," EFF's Lohmann says of the controversial measure.
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