Louisville, Colorado-based StorageTek has provided clients with data storage since 1969, installing tape libraries with massive capacities and other solutions at over 17,000 client sites. Its diagnostic software is used to service these client-based installations, known as the Maintenance Code, allowing StorageTek to debug its systems whenever necessary. Access to the Code is for StorageTek alone and is protected by a security algorithm called a GetKey.
Some of StorageTek's clients also use third party storage maintenance services companies. One of these, Custom Hardware Engineering & Consulting Inc., was accused by StorageTek of compromising its GetKey and using its Maintenance Code for its own business purposes.
This, argued StorageTek, violates the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, which restricts the circumvention of copy-protection systems.
Granting a preliminary injunction on 2nd July, Judge Rya W Zobel of the Massachusetts District Court appeared to agree.
Custom Hardware, reasoned Judge Zobel, "chose to piggyback on [StorageTek's] Maintenance Code". It managed to do this by "circumventing the GetKey to gain access to the Maintenance Code and then resetting the maintenance level. They thus stealthily obtain [StorageTek's] Event Messages, which they transmit to their own computers".
Judge Zobel also ruled that an exception to the DMCA, designed to protect technicians when the machine they are trying to service copies a program automatically when they switch it on, does not apply.
He found that Custom Hardware did not copy the Code just for repair, but also "for the express purpose of circumventing plaintiff's security measures, modifying the Maintenance Level, and intercepting plaintiff's Event Messages". Nor did Custom Hardware immediately destroy the copy after the maintenance was completed, as required under the Act.
The ruling has been criticised by some as effectively giving StoragTek a monopoly on servicing its systems.