DVDCCA Sues Maker of Luxury DVD Jukebox

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."

They just need a different license

[__aaitqo8496]

The DVD Copy Control Association is just upset that they didn't think of it first.

If they had, they could have made a seperate, more restrictive, more expensive license. :)

Re:Legitimate uses forbidden now?

[gcaseye6677]

This is not about piracy; it's about control. People who blow almost $30,000 on a glorified DVD player have no need to pirate the movies. This is about the movie studios keeping 100% control over how the end user uses the product they have paid for. If a company is allowed to make an expensive jukebox, then a company will be allowed to make a cheap one. Which means individuals will be able to buy them, someone might install a copy of a movie they didn't pay for, someone might figure out how to get the annoying ads off of the beginning of the movie, etc. The studios just don't get it. They fought the VCR from the beginning, and they are continuing to fight every new version of the home video recorder. Ultimately, these stupid efforts at control cost the studios a lot more than they could ever gain from it, but this is what happens when a business is run "by the numbers" with no regard for the customers.

Shooting themselves in the foot?

[TooMuchEspressoGuy]

Anyone who can afford a $27k jukebox must own a heck of a lot of DVD's, most likely legitimately purchased (why would someone who can afford $27k for a "DVD jukebox" waste hours illegally downloading and burning a DVD movie, or pay for a cheap bootleg?)

Regardless of the legality of the suit, the DCCA seems to be suing a company that caters to the most loyal DVD purchasers in the world. Such a misguided move can only have negative effects upon the DVD industry.

Re:Legitimate uses forbidden now?

[Curtman]

I guess the lesson to be learned is: don't get the license. Same deal with SCO, being a paying customer doesn't get you any loyalty, only legal snares to entrap you in.

Re:The problem

[mscnln]

What's to stop people from going to Blockbuster Video, renting DVDs and copying them to their computer?? I guess the DVDCCA needs to sue all makers of dvd drives and hard drives (in addition to RAM) for computers too...

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot?

[DrJimbo]

You seem to be missing the most obvious way that the Kaleidescape could be abused (in the eyes of the DCCA):

Storing rented DVDs.

This does not require hours of downloading or involve cheap bootlegs. I think the DCCA are addressing a legitimate problem here. If this sort of system is perfectly legal then once the price of the technology drops, either DVD rentals or DVD sales will have to go away because the prices of rentals and sales will be driven together by market forces.

Re:The problem

[TooMuchEspressoGuy]

"What's to stop people from going to Blockbuster Video, renting a few hundred DVDs and copying them to this device?"

The short answer: nothing. But that doesn't mean that these "DVD jukeboxes" should be outlawed, since the *potential* for abuse is not good enough grounds to make something illegal.

To offer an anaolgy: Knives can be used to commit murder as easily as they can be used for legitimaate uses (say, to chop vegetables.) But no one is suggesting that we make knives illegal, since their benefit in legal use far outweighs the danger that someone might use them to stab another person. In the same way, the benefit that hardware or software that can be used to backup DVD's has in the realm of fair use far outweighs the harm that can come from a few lazy nitwits renting movies from Blockbuster and making copies of them.

Re:Legitimate uses forbidden now?

[Overzeetop]

Transmission over CAT5 doesn't necessarily imply TCP/IP-ready streaming. I suspect this is dedicated cabling running either to dedicated remotes or VGA/composite over CAT5 with baluns at the client end.

It could be used in a multi-user houshold, but there are pretty limited cases where you would be violating typical copyright licenses. You can watch different DVDs in every room legally, you can watch the same DVD on multiple TVs simultaneously legally. The only case I can think of is playing the same title asyncronously in multiple locations.

$27k is way above my threshold for a DVD server, so I'm not familiar with the hardware. I've got $1000 in the box I want to use as one...but it's just a pipe dream until I can come up with 2TB of space for my collection (Actually, I can probably rip most of my 200+/- titles to 1.3 or 1.4TB if I reauthor to the main feature alone)

Re:The problem

[gstoddart]

What's to stop people from going to Blockbuster Video, renting a few hundred DVDs and copying them to this device?

The $27K pricetag??

You're right though. As pointed out elsewhere in this thread, they're probably moving to block the precedent before someone does it with cheaper hardware.

A quote to note

[MunchMunch]

"Kaleidescape creates expensive consumer electronics networks that upload the full contents of as many as 500 DVDs to a home server, and allow the owner to browse through the movies without later using the DVDs themselves. That's exactly what the copy-protection technology on DVDs, called Content Scramble System (CSS) was meant to prevent, the Hollywood-backed group said."

I had to read that a couple times just to make sure that I was seeing what I was seeing. The CSS system was explicitly made to prevent people from exercising fair use backups of their legally purchased DVDs? I thought it was to prevent piracy? Moreover, after paying all those congressmen all that money, they just turn a cold shoulder to their darling, the DMCA.

Kinda seems lazy on their part. At least they could properly cite the corrupt, consumer-hostile law they explicitly created to castrate fair use.

Easiest Target...

[al701]

So if you are a poor individual you get sued directly, but if you are rich and can afford $27k systems, then the company that is struggleing to get a product to market gets sued? Well you can't blame them for being smart about the targets.

Re:A quote to note

[bill_mcgonigle]

That's exactly what the copy-protection technology on DVDs, called Content Scramble System (CSS) was meant to prevent, the Hollywood-backed group said.

No it's not. Unless their cryptographers had their heads up their asses, CSS was designed to enforce the purchase of playback keys from the DVDCCA and limit who could make DVD players. The CSS algorithm does nothing to address bit-copies.

Is the DVDCCA claiming it's inept? It sure sounds like it, and the studios may be interested in that little tidbit.

Re:Legitimate uses forbidden now?

[steve_bryan]

Did you actually RTFA? Kaleidescape had a license with the DVD-CCA and obviously went to considerable lengths to keep them happy. This is a well funded, high end effort. I'd be willing to bet that the DVD-CCA just changed their minds and have decided to add punitive legal expenses to the profit calculations to nullify the previously legitimate business enterprise.

In other words the DVD-CCA probably knows they won't prevail in court but because of their deep pockets hope to win by attrition. I wasn't a great fan of Kaleidescape (too expensive by a wide margin) but I hope they countersue and win an amount large enough to cause real discomfort for the weasels at DVD-CCA.

Yes, $27,000 for a 3.3TB system

[norminator]

I don't think the parent understands the market for this device. Products that are engineered for the high-end market don't use off the shelf hardware, and they have major hardware and software engineering that goes into them. Everything from the UI to the Audio and Video Hardware to the network protocols has had many many hours of research, design and testing. This is much more than a Dell PC that shares movies to other Dells. Plus, the people who are willing to buy this kind of system aren't the Slashdot-do-it-yourself types who will spend hours screwing around with kernels and config files and daemons and everything. These people just pay their A/V dealers to take the thing out of the box, plug it into the network, and turn it on. That's all it takes, and it works! I've set this one up before, and it is that easy, because the product is engineered to death at the factory, not in some /.er's basement lab. And don't forget that this is designed to be controlled by super high-end home automation systems, like 15" Crestron touchscreens, that also control everything else in the house.

There's a whole hgh-end electronics world that most of the /. crowd will never understand, who will always say "Why would someone pay for that when I could build it?" The answer is, because it's already built much better, it's easier to use, and they have the $$$.

Re:All my DVDs are "cached" too

[1ucius]

The anticircumvention provisions of the DMCA are completely separate from copyright law. Thus, it is possible to violate the DMCA without infringing any copyrights, and to infringe a copyright without violating the DMCA.

Personally, I doubt this would be a DMCA violation. Its anticircumvention provisions makes 3 things illegal: trafficing an access control circumvention device, trafficing a copy control circumvention device, and circumventing an access control. The first 2 don't apply b/c he is doing the circumvention himself. The last 1 *probably* doesn't apply either b/c CSS isn't really intended to prevent access (as opposed to copying).