Susan Yvonne Illston is a San Francisco, California-based judge for the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in the Ninth Judicial Circuit. She was nominated by President Bill Clinton on January 23, 1995 and confirmed by the Senate on May 25, 1995. Prior to her appointment, she had served in private practice in Burlingame, California. She is a graduate of Duke University and Stanford Law School.

Judge Illston is probably best known for her ruling in the noted 321 Studios case.^{citation needed} In February 2004, she ruled that the company's software, which was intended, according to the company, to allow consumers to make back up copies of pre-recorded ("pressed") DVD videos by "circumventing" so-called "copy protection" methods, was illegal under Federal law. She issued an injunction at the behest of several Hollywood studios ordering 321 Studios to stop selling their product.

Despite finding that the software violated Federal law, she ruled that copies made by consumers (of their own legally accessed DVD videos) were, in fact, legal. She wrote in her opinion, "It is the technology itself at issue, not the uses to which the copyrighted material may be put.... Legal downstream use of the copyrighted material by customers is not a defense to the software manufacturer's violation of the provisions (of copyright law)."¹

In August 2006, Illston sentenced the chemist who developed an undetectable performance-enhancing drug for BALCO to three months in prison. ²

In July of 2008, she dismissed a copyright infringement and racketeering lawsuit against the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), filed by radio host Michael Savage.^{citation needed}

References

1. ^ "Judge: DVD-copying software is illegal" Cnet, accessed 24 AUG 2008
2. ^ Man who concocted 'the clear' gets 3 months in prison - Associated Press, 8/4/06

External links

• Federal Judicial Center Profile

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