DRM Stripper Ace Deal Agrees To Pay Over US$5m in Fines

Although 4K content has not found its way into the homes of consumers around the world just yet, there was a particular service in existence removing the DRM associated with this content type. Ace Deal, as this service was known, has to pay US$5m in damaged to Intel and Warner Bros.

Ace Deal Forced To Pay The Piper

DRM Has always been a topic of substantial debate among content consumers, as people want to watch what they want, there they want, on whatever device they want. Unfortunately, that is not possible in this day and age, as content is restricted to specific platforms. In some cases, this even means people cannot make a legal backup of their legitimately purchased content.

However, that is not to say services such as Ace Deal can offer a solution to strip DRM from Blu-ray and 4K content all of a sudden. There is a good reason as to why DRM protection has been enabled, as it makes it much more difficult to start pirating content and distributing it over the Internet.

Ace Deal has admitted they violated the copyright under the DMCA, by selling HDCP-strippers to remove copy protection associated with Blu-ray and 4K content. With over 2,000 of these devices sold in recent years, there was a huge market to have DRM removed from video material.

It came as quite a surprise to find out Ace Deal has agreed to pay a fine of US$5,250,000; as it is quite a hefty sum for a small company.  Additionally, similar products may not be offered by the firm or its employees in the future. All in all, this seems to be the most positive outcome for all parties involved.

It is important to note the court still has to sign off on this deal, although it is expected this will happen very soon. Whether or not this means more of these deals will be settled in the future, remains to be seen, though. The war against copyright infringement is far from over, and internet piracy remains a booming market.

Source: TorrentFreak

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