PxLinux faces legal action by Plextor's parent company

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The developers of PxScan/PxView and PxLinux received two letters (cease and desist orders) sent by a law firm in Brussels representing Shinano Kenshi, the Japanese company which controls the Plextor brand and develops Plextools (R) for Windows.

PxScan/PxView and PxLinux are free/libre open-source (FLOSS) software utilities which allow owners of Plextor PX-712 and PX-716 DVD recorders to use the extra features of these drives.

PxScan is a command line utility while PxView has graphical output. Both utilities were developed by Alexander Noé (Interview) and run on Windows. PxLinux, developed by Zeb (Interview), is actually the GNU/Linux port of PxScan/PxView and has similar functionality. PxLinux is especially important to Plextor drive owners because it allows them to use the drives' extra features easily under the GNU/Linux operating system. These extra features are normally used only via special software, which is provided by Plextor only for Windows (called PlexTools).

According to this source, the PxScan/PxView/PxLinux developers Alexander Noé and Zeb, are accused by Shinano Kenshi's lawyers for:

  • Using "unfair commercial practices" because they allegedly compared and announced that their software is an alternative for Plextools.
  • Harming the company's "good name and fame" because of the alleged comparisons between PxScan and PlexTools.
  • Infringing various intellectual rights of the company, including "The right of reproduction, translation, adaptation, arrangement and any other alteration of a computer program and the reproduction of the results thereof as well as the right to control all and any form of distribution and dissemination. Infringement of the author rights (and where applicable, copyright) in relation with protected interfaces. The trademark of the company".

Don't forget to read the interview with Alexander Noé!

The cease and desist letters were written on 16 May 2005 and received by the developers a week ago. According to the developers' forum posts, they had to answer by 1 June 2005. (Source: cdfreaks forum). Both developers say that they have not received anything in paper yet, only a scanned image (PDF) of the letter sent to them through email.

PxView and PxLinux (with the help of some Python scripts) can show graphs showing how Plextor drives optimise recording. The source code of PxLinux was under the GPL licence and, according to the developers, does not contain any third-party code.

Also read our interview with Zeb, developer of PxLinux.

The extra features of Plextor drives, often called Q-Check functions, are actually SCSI command sequences, implemented over the more common ATA protocol, which allow the drive to perform advanced error detection and correction, including media quality check. Plextor customers who wish to use these extra features need to install special software, but Plextor provides it only for the Microsoft Windows operating system. PxLinux allows GNU/Linux users to perform C1, C2, PIE, PIF, Jitter, Beta, and TA testing on Plextor drives that support these functions. According to a PxLinux developer, the interface of Plextor drives is standard MMC-3 (MultiMedia Command) SCSI compliant. The MMC3 interface is publicly available. (Source: cdfreaks.com forum).

The developers of PxScan/PxView/PxLinux are located in Europe and their software just sends SCSI command sequences to the drive and - as the developers say - Plextor drives do not utilise any encryption to hide the commands. Other free software packages also support various special features of Plextor drives. It is therefore unconfirmed whether the legal actions described in the cease-and-desist orders can be actually enforced in a court of law.

PxLinux was hosted at SourceForge.net for a while, before being deleted from there after the site received a legal complaint.

It should be noted that recently Mr. Dirk Peters, Plextor's director of Marketing, said that "Plextor is strongly committed to supporting the Open Source Software movement" (source: Slashdot.org). Given the new developments, it is difficult to explain the actual attitude of Plextor / Shinano Kenshi towards libre software, but a participant of the club.cdfreaks.com forum speculated that the European and Japanese branches may have different policies on free software.

The text of this article is Copyright (C) 2005 by Nikolaos S. Karastathis and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 licence. You are welcome to copy, republish, modify, translate and disseminate the whole text of this article in accordance with the aforementioned licence, but you should always include this copyright notice and refer or link to its original location at http://portal.wikinerds.org/pxlinux-legal

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Image credits: The CDR image is Copyright (C) 2005 by Dante Alighieri and is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 licence. You can find more information here.

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