DVDCCA Sues Maker of Luxury DVD Jukebox 260
McSpew writes "The DVD Copy Control Association has decided to sue Kaleidescape for violating its CSS license. Kaleidescape's crime? They make a super-high-end (~$27k) DVD jukebox system that caches DVD movies onto a server (3.3TB of disk space). Kaleidescape says they've complied with the terms of their CSS license and they're considering countersuing. I want one, but I'm not a pro athlete, rapper or movie star, so I'll probably have to roll my own."
Re:Legitimate uses forbidden now? (Score:4, Informative)
As i read the article, the target is people who violate the license agreement they signed, not their customers.
from the Kaleidescape FAQ (Score:5, Informative)
A: Most DVDs are protected by the Content Scramble System ("CSS"), a method used to encrypt the video and audio data. Manufacturers of legitimate DVD playback products must obtain a license from the DVD Copy Control Association (the "DVD CCA") to remove CSS encryption. Kaleidescape has obtained such a license, and Kaleidescape scrupulously adheres to its required procedures and restrictions. For example, when playing back DVD content, the System only allows the audio and video outputs permitted by the CSS License Agreement. The System's analog video outputs are further protected by certain Macrovision technology, which was obtained pursuant to a separate license from Macrovision Corporation. The CSS License Agreement does not prohibit the copying of CSS-protected DVD data into memory or onto a hard disk. However, in order to comply with the CSS License Agreement, any such copying must be done without exposing certain types of DVD data (keys or unscrambled audio/video data) on "user-accessible buses," such as the PCI bus in a personal computer. The Kaleidescape System complies with this restriction by virtue of being a closed system comprised of proprietary hardware and software that Kaleidescape designed from the ground up with content security as a major design objective.
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Q: Can I share movies loaded on my Kaleidescape System with other users or other homes?
A: The Kaleidescape System is designed and licensed solely for use in a single-family dwelling. Kaleidescape's security architecture prevents movies from being accessed or transmitted over the Internet, or to computers inside or outside of the home. The movies on a Server are only accessible to Kaleidescape Movie Players that are attached to the same Ethernet LAN.
$27,000 for a 3.3TB system?? (Score:5, Informative)
Hardware breakdown
Server:
Case and dual power supplies ($500)
Mobo + Processor + RAM ($600)
DVD Drive ($50)
3Ware RAID-5 12-port card ($800)
12 400GB Seagate SATA Drives ($3600) (10 data, 1 parity, 1 hot spare) for 4TB.
Total: $5550 + SH + Taxes
Client:
Shuttle SFF box ($300)
CPU, RAM ($300)
40GB HD ($70)
DVD Drive ($50)
RF or IR keyboard/mouse ($70)
Total: $790 for each client
So I'm thinking the DVDCCA license is REALLY expensive if they charge $27,000 per unit.
Re:All my DVDs are "cached" too (Score:3, Informative)
The term fair use is a legal term. If you have exercised fair use in your copying DVD's to your RAID, then by definition, you haven't broken any laws. However, if your copying is not a valid "fair use" per US CODE Title 17 Chapter 1 Section 107 (If you're in the USA). Then by definition, you are breaking the law.
Thus if we are speaking about fair use and the copying of DVD's to the RAID, it is impossible to excercise fair use and break the law at the same time . . .
Re:Exact Copy? (Score:5, Informative)
Kaliededscape Server [kaleidescape.com]
Been drooling over one of these since they were announced... pity that our liticious society no is treading on fair use AFTER issuing a license to do exactly what they're suing over.
jdepew
Seen these and they are a joke (Score:5, Informative)
These units are pretty damn cool. I say units plural because you need three components. 1) Ripper 2) Storage/Server 3) Player
They all look really sleek, black cases with blue lighting. So as the SoCal sales rep was demo'ing the units, I was a bit confused why they seperated the ripper and server, the rep responded with "Many of our clients would prefer to have a slimmer component in their library or den and the server can be in the basement." What? The server is the size of a rackmount case and the ripper is a little bit smaller. Why not save some money and combine them? I asked how much the units cost and for a 1 room set up with 1.5 TB storage was around $27,000. A few people started laughing, and a few others just got up and walked out.
Why so expensive? Well for starters they include something like 50 DVDs already preloaded, which of course you are already paying for, but have no choice in what is preloaded other than 2-3 different packages. You can't buy the unit without the pre-loads. Also, the company decided to design the OS from scratch! Linux would be perfect for something like this, but nope, they said they've spent years developing a proprietary OS specifically for this unit. Stupid decision.
While demo'ing the unit, the rep had a difficult time browsing around, like he'd never used one before! There were also some noticable bugs in the GUI too that one of the company engineers had a difficult time working around. We sometimes sat there for 5-10 minutes while they sorted out these issues. It was really unbelievable that they were charging this insane amount for a unit I could build for around $1,000. I'm in IT sales and this guy was a prety bad salesman so I was shocked that they put him in charge of what should be the territory that has 90% of their sales, Southern California.
In speaking with many other companies showing off their latest media centers, PVRs, etc..., I saw some pretty impressive ones well priced too. Speaking with their reps, Kaliedescape was apparently the joke of the expo. They loved laughing and joking about that company.
Bottom line is it was a cool unit, but waaay over-priced as other have noted before me. What makes it even worse is the reps at the expo included their main sales reps and some engineers, who were trying to sell us to be dealers, were brutal. So I'm not sure what that says about the company as a whole, but it is probably not a good thing. I don't see any way this company survives unless they get a ton of athletes/movie stars buying them left and right. At this point, they've apparently only sold a few dozen and its been on the market for I believe about a year. He seemed rather proud of that but making probably $5,000 per system, that isn't going to cut it to support an entire company.
To answer a question I saw earlier about what's stopping the user from renting blockbuster movies to be ripped and returned. Nothing is stopping them. I asked that same question and the rep snobbishly laughed and explained that their clients don't rent movies, they buy them. Which is probably true. I also asked about how this is legal for them to do, and they said it took years of getting the movie indutry's backing, but they were finally able to do it. Looks like that might not have been the case after all. Now their clients all can be sued. Probably won't happen, but with the MPAA, you never know.
I'm an avid anti-*AA person (DVDCCA is close enough). But in this case, I really don't care. I think it's funny actually. I'll laugh if they sue this company in to bankruptcy. They're going to die off anyways, why not speed up the process.
Pix and comments at LIVEdigitally (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Exact Copy? (Score:3, Informative)
They've had these commercials for a long time - my DVD player shows the icon indicating "operation prohibited by disk" when I try to fast-forward. The solution? Fire up Xine/MPlayer/VLC, and just open DVD title 1. That's almost always the very beginning of the opening credits.
Re:Legitimate uses forbidden now? (Score:2, Informative)
The unit does allow this. I'm watching the press-kit movie (available from http://www.kaleidescape.com/news/presskit.html#k-
Perhaps this is where the problem lies?
As for the numerous people complaining about the price tag, it covers much more than hardware. The UI is very slick, and has obviously had a lot of time put into it. I wouldn't pay $27,000 for the unit, but I can see why someone would.
Re:All my DVDs are "cached" too (Score:3, Informative)
Also you did it wrong. Reproducing an entire DVD is not transformative -- it's the same work. A transformative use would be if you altered it so much that it became something new.
Anyway, satisfying the fourth prong may be sufficient on its own, but I've never seen that happen. The slimmest fair use I've ever seen is space shifting, and that's part of the first prong and the fourth. OTOH, I will say that I don't recall a fair use that didn't involve a win on the fourth prong, but that doesn't make it sufficient by itself.
Re:Seen these and they are a joke (Score:4, Informative)
While demo'ing the unit, our sales rep (Jody) was using the IR controller that I provided for him for the first time. It was a mistake on my part as he wasn't familiar with it. Additionally, I had set up the network in the room with a router that was failing. This difficult circumstance (exacerbated by the very short time we had to set up) led to a poor technology demo. If you noticed, I rebooted the router, re-acquired an IP address and the demo was functioning again. I was sitting in the back of the room for most of the demo and not a single person walked out.
We wrote our own OS from scratch because other available OS's (such as Linux) did not meet our needs from either a technical or a legal standpoint. This is not necessarily to say that Linux would not be up to the task, but the legal requirements of the GNU may be incompatible with other licenses that we require, and it would be difficult if not impossible to comply with the DVD CCA's CSS license agreement using a general-purpose operating system. Additionally, it did not take us "years" to create our own OS.
As the only engineer who attended EH Expo, I apologize if I came across as being "brutal". I'm passionate about this product, and sometimes that passion comes across too strong. Many others feel this passion as well, as we've sold hundreds, not just "a few dozen" units.
Ian Epperson
Software Engineer
Kaleidescape, Inc.