Diamond Multimedia today won an important court victory for its Rio portable player technology, overruling intense opposition from the recording industry.

The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled the Rio PMP300 player is not a"digital recording device," as defined by the Audio Home Recording Act. Under that law, recording device manufacturers must implement code systems to stop copyright infringement.

The court ruled that the act applies to recordings made from digital audio tapes or CDs, but not to recordings made from the hard drives of computers. MP3 players are used to download MP3 music files from web servers for local playback.

The Diamond case stemmed from a lawsuit filed the last fall, in which the recording industry alleged that the Rio and MP3 technologies should be declared illegal and taken off the market.

More details are available in the story posted at http://www.news.com .