The California Supreme Court on Monday dealt a blow to the movie industry's bid to crack down on piracy, ruling that a Texas man could not be sued in California for posting a program on the Internet that could be used to make bootleg copies of copyrighted DVDs.
The high court said the DVD Copy Control Association, which licenses encryption software for DVDs, could still sue Matthew Pavlovich for posting the code-breaking program in 1999 that allowed users to illegally copy movies. But they added in a 4-3 decision that the industry association had to do so in either Pavlovich's home state of Texas or in Indiana where he was a student when he posted the software.
The association, which sued for trade secret infringement, had argued that Pavlovich should face a lawsuit in California because the California-centered movie industry was most harmed by the illegal copying of DVDs.
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