DVDFab's reaction after their main domains and funds were seized following a U.S. Court order
DVDFab is a Chinese software company located in Beijing, which specializes in DVD ripping software such as their popular DVDFab line and DVDFab HD Decrypter, but also provides other products like DVDFab Media Player. Their main products allow you to make copies of your DVDs, including the ones protected with AACS, a standard intended to restrict access to and copying of DVDs and Blu-ray discs.
It is no surprise that this attracted the attention of AACS LA, a consortium of companies including Walt Disney, Warner Brothers, Sony, Toshiba, Microsoft, Intel, IBM, Panasonic. AACS LA filed a lawsuit in a New York court this February against DVDFab, and won on March 10, 2014. DVDFab did not appear in court.
Effective immediately most of the domains owned by DVDFab were seized, including dvdfab.com, DVDFab.net, DVDidle.com, 3d-videoconverters.com. The US hosting companies were ordered to stop any service provided to DVDFab and bank providers were asked to freeze all funds belonging to the Chinese company.
Further more, Facebook, Twitter and Google were ordered to remove DVDFab's profiles from Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and YouTube. Until now, only Facebook removed their DVDFab page.
Following the court's decision (copy available here), most download sites decided to remove DVDFab's products, while others are still listing them.
How did DVDFab respond
DVDFab affiliates received an email informing them about the company's downtime and redirecting them to their local sites www.dvdfab.cn or http://en.dvdfab.jp.
Shortly after, DVDFab launched http://ilikedvdfab.com/, a site dedicated to supporting DVDFab. A quote from the site states:
"In order to protect the interests of our existing customers, we have already recovered all the normal businesses to www.dvdfab.cn. At the same time, we promise to reverse the situation through every possible effort. DVDFab Team as a whole, will stick to the same mission in the years to come, to better your entertainment life. We shall not perish from this earth!"
Clicking the "Join Us" button on this site will pop-up a twitter message window allowing fans to customize their support tweet. A list of more than 4,000 tweets sent so far can be read at https://twitter.com/hashtag/dvdfabcomeback.
Their forums are showing this message:
"Keep an eye on your inbox if you are a registered user of any DVDFab product. An email message from DVDFab will be coming soon with some additional information and news of what you can do to show support and help. Meanwhile, the normal business of providing users with continuous development and frequent product updates continues at full speed with new versions of DVDFab, DVDFab for Mac, Passkey and DVDFab Media Player!"
What to expect next
This lawsuit sets a controversial precedent and software similar to DVDFab might be targeted next by the major movie companies behind AACS LA.
While some argue that it's a fair decision, many see this decision in which DVDFab was literally obliterated from the web, as an extreme one, very close to the restrictions that SOPA and PIPA tried to impose in 2011 and 2012. As a reminder, SOPA and PIPA generated massive online protests in which more than 115,000 sites took part, including Wikipedia, Google, Firefox.
Disclaimer
Note that circumventing copy protection is illegal in some countries, including US. In other countries however, you are allowed to make personal backups of DVD and Blu-Ray movies, if you have purchased them. This latest practice gets our vote as well and it would be nice to see it go legal across the globe one day.
