There is something funny about this. Media Rights Technologies and BlueBeat.com are launching a wide-ranging effort to force some of the tech world’s biggest companies to adopt their technologies--and they are using the courts to do their work.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was signed into law by President Clinton in 1998 to disseminate and protect the arts in the digital age. It makes illegal and prohibits the manufacture of any product or technology that is designed for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure which effectively controls access to a copyrighted work or which protects the rights of copyright owners. Under the DMCA, mere avoidance of an effective copyright protection solution is a violation of the act.

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20070510/SFTH062 )

MRT and BlueBeat have developed a technological measure which effectively controls access to copyrighted material. That product, the X1 SeCure Recording Control, has been tested by the industry’s standards bodies, the RIAA and IFPI, and has been proven effective against stream ripping, while protecting privacy and limiting infringement liability for users, distributors and academic institutions. It has been designed for rapid deployment on a reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) basis.

Therefore, Media Rights Technologies (MRT) and BlueBeat.com have issued cease and desist letters to Microsoft, Adobe, Real Networks and Apple with respect to the production or sale of such products as the Vista OS, Adobe Flash Player, Real Player, Apple iTunes and iPod.

MRT asserts Apple, Microsoft, Real and Adobe have produced billions of these products without regard for the DMCA or the rights of American Intellectual Property owners, actively avoiding the use of MRT’s technologies.

In case you didn’t read the above--since reading PR releases isn’t something most people do for fun--let me sum it up:

The law (apparently--I’m neither a lawyer nor a compulsive reader of legalese) makes it a crime for a company to develop a device or software that doesn’t use “effective copyright protection solutions.” Since the companies filing the injunction have developed just such a solution, the companies who don’t use their technology must be in violation of the law.

What’s an ethical, DRM-loving company to do? Well it’s obviously time to call in the lawyers. Lawyers can fix everything.

Okay, maybe funny isn’t the right term. Maybe what I was looking for was pathetic, obvious, idiotic, and irritating.

Read the rest.

Update: More here at CNET.