321 Studios
Encyclopedia
321 Studios was a privately held company
headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri
with a sales office in Berkeley
, California
. The company was a leading provider of DVD authoring software, including the highly controversial DVD X Copy
product line of DVD
copy software
. The DVDXCopy family of products enabled novice computer users to quickly and easily copy any DVD movie, including DVD movies protected with the Content Scrambling System (CSS). 321 Studios' products were sold through most major North America
n and International retailers and worldwide via the company website. In February 2004, after a three year legal battle with several of the major Hollywood studios, the DVDXCopy products were deemed by a California court to be in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
in the case 321 Studios v. Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios, Inc.
and were subsequently banned for sale. 321 Studios closed its doors in August 2004.
Privately held company
A privately held company or close corporation is a business company owned either by non-governmental organizations or by a relatively small number of shareholders or company members which does not offer or trade its company stock to the general public on the stock market exchanges, but rather the...
headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri
Missouri
Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...
with a sales office in Berkeley
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
. The company was a leading provider of DVD authoring software, including the highly controversial DVD X Copy
DVD X Copy
DVD X Copy was a consumer software program that enabled novice computer users to copy any DVD movie to any blank DVD. Most commercial DVD movies include Content Scrambling System , a copy-protection technology designed to prevent DVD movies from being copied...
product line of DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
copy software
Ripping
Ripping is the process of copying audio or video content to a hard disk, typically from removable media. The word is used to refer to all forms of media. Despite the name, neither the media nor the data is damaged after extraction....
. The DVDXCopy family of products enabled novice computer users to quickly and easily copy any DVD movie, including DVD movies protected with the Content Scrambling System (CSS). 321 Studios' products were sold through most major North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
n and International retailers and worldwide via the company website. In February 2004, after a three year legal battle with several of the major Hollywood studios, the DVDXCopy products were deemed by a California court to be in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
Digital Millennium Copyright Act
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization . It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures that control access to...
in the case 321 Studios v. Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios, Inc.
321 Studios v. Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios, Inc.
321 Studios v Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios, Inc., 307 F. Supp. 2d 1085 , is a district court case brought by 321 Studios seeking declaratory judgment from the court that their DVD ripping software, i.e...
and were subsequently banned for sale. 321 Studios closed its doors in August 2004.
Product Line
- DVD Copy Plus: the original product that copies DVD source materials onto CDs by splitting the source DVD to multiple CDs.
- DVD X Copy: the flagship product that started the controversy relating to copying CSS protected DVD movies. This DVD copy software makes exact lossless copies of DVD9 movies (8.4 gigabytes of DVD video) by splitting the source DVD to any two (DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD+RW and DVD-RW formats) blank 4.7 gigabyte DVDs.
- DVD X Copy Xpress: a "1-Click DVD Copy" application that compresses a DVD9 source disc to one single blank DVD. The resulting copy is a lossy backup of the original, although the loss in quality minimal visually and is generally not noticeable when viewed on standard televisions.
- DVD X Copy Gold: a two product suite that includes DVD X Copy and DVD X Copy Xpress. The two products are not integrated into one, but rather sold as a money saving software bundle.
- DVD X Copy Platinum: a three product suite that includes DVD X Copy Xpress and a more advanced version onf DVD X Copy that enabled users to customize a DVD backup session by including or deleting specific "TitleSets" and the setting of compression ratios for individual tracks. DVD X Copy Platinum also includes DVD X Rescue recovery software. DVD X Copy Platinum became 321 Studios best-selling product.
- DVD X Rescue: recovers data from unreadable, scratched, corrupt or defective CDs and DVDs
- GamesXCopy: an application for copying copy-protected PC games.
- CDXRescue: recovers data from unreadable, scratched, corrupt or defective CDs
- DVDXPoint: converts PowerPoint presentations into DVD movies and saves them on recordable DVDs
- DVDXMaker: DVD authoring software for converting home videos into a DVD movie format
- DVDXShow: DVD authoring software for converting digital images in a DVD movie format
- AudioXtools: an MP3MP3MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
and CD burning program for organizing and burning MP3 files to CD-R discs
- DVDXtreme: a 9-product suite including DVDXCopy Xpress, AudioXTools, DVDXShow, DVDXMaker, CDXRescue, SnapshotXpress, ImageXRescue, BurnXpress and LabelXPert