Tenative Ruling Against Kaleidescape in DVD CCA Case 150
An anonymous reader wrote in with an update in the long drawn out legal proceedings between the DVD CCA and Kaleidescape, a manufacturer of a video jukeboxes. Despite a victory by Kaleidescape in 2007, they ended up back in court in November 2011. The DVD CCA insisted that ripping a DVD was in violation of the license granted to Kaleidescape; Kaleidescape disagreed since their jukebox made a bit-for-bit copy of the disc rather than first decrypting the contents. Unfortunately, in a preliminary ruling, the court agrees with the DVD CCA. Kaleidescape has released a statement.
Time to change the civil adjucation process (Score:3, Informative)
Just let both parties put up a binding contract of injunctive relief. Then they submit it together with an undisclosed amount of money to the court. Whichever side submitted the most wins and their contract is enforced. The other side gets the money, minus, say, 10% that go to taxes. Problem solved: better, predictable justice for all instead of the travesty of "who bought the judge" all the while pretending that there is such a thing as fairness.
DVD ? DVDead. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm quite familiar with the Kaleidescape system. It's effectively a DVD jukebox that uses disc images instead of physical media. In 2011, it's a very outdated piece of technology, but it remains one of the few idiot-proof systems out there. Pay gobs of money, plug it into your TV, fiddle the remote and you're off to the races.
From the very beginning, the system has required users to rip their own DVDs. You don't download shows to it, you have to pop in the disc and let the system create its own image. No disc, no love. Sure, you could toss in a burned disc, but by that point the encryption has already been broken. The only way you can willfully circumvent copyright laws with this thing is by renting/borrowing a movie, ripping it and returning the disc.
That said, if someone has the whimsical income to afford a $7000+ Kaleidescape system, they can probably afford to buy their movies legally. Once again, the movie industry doesn't have a goddamned clue.
Re:Obviously (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, they are in a lot of counties. This particular judge was elected - it took about 30 seconds of googling.
Re:Obviously (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, Superior Court judges in California (like the one this ruling was issued by) are elected.
The judge in question was elected in 2006, so he's also up for reelection this year.
Re:Obviously (Score:0, Informative)
Used to be plenty of judges who thought like you.
Send a white man to life in prison for murdering a black man? Don't be preposterous!
Don't worry, there are still plenty of vigilante's in robes out there.
Tentative (Score:2, Informative)
Tenative? (Score:4, Informative)
I think you meant tentative. Does nobody use spell check these days?
Re:Obviously (Score:5, Informative)
You still require a basic DVD-ROM to even begin to physically read the disk. I don't think that is forced, and certainly not by law. You have a choice of DVD hardware to purchase.
Sure, you can pick the logo on the player but you don't have a choice. To play DVDs it must have a CSS key, to get a CSS key it must follow the CSS license and to play it in any other way would violate the DMCA (or EUCD in Europe or whatever fits your region). It doesn't matter if you've legally bought and own the disc, if you find a way to play it on your own you're a criminal. And because every manufacturer is under the whip of the CSS license, so are you. If they want to enforce region codes or don't want you to fast forward past the commercials they can impose those conditions on the manufacturers through the license who will then impose those restrictions on you. It's not required by law, they've just taken away all other ways of doing it legally - but it works much the same.
Re:Obviously (Score:4, Informative)
Technically this case was more of the agreement between DVD Forum and Kaleidascope. The DVD Forum runs a licensing agency (DVD CCA) that handles all the patents/technology/etc licensing so if you want to implement the DVD standard, you apply for a license and get access to the spec, the patents, etc.
The licensing agreement states fundamentally that a movie DVD data may not be copied to another medium except for temporary storage. It also states other things (wonder why you can't ever get more than 480p out of the analog outputs? Same reason - of course, HDMI hadn't quite been invented yet, so it's really just a loophole).
And that's where the company lost - they made a DVD media server that "ripped" DVDs to hard drive and didn't require the disc to play, in contravention to the licensing agreement they signed.
The DVD Forum is not the MPAA's bitch, though. Their next gen HD spec was dropped because the movie studios hated the fact that it lacked region protection, letting people in other countries import HD-DVDs before the movie even hit theatres. (It was one reason why the studios started releasing HD-DVDs long after the DVD and Blu-Ray versions came out... lots of people were doing this before the movies hit their local theatres months later).