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."
Legitimate uses forbidden now? (Score:5, Interesting)
Note: I'm using 9G average, figuring on the odd 2 disc set balancing out the typical 7G on a disc.
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.
Re:Legitimate uses forbidden now? (Score:2)
Anyway, I did scan the article, and yes, they're going after Kaleidescope. While I suppose this could be like trademark protection (defend to the death or lose it), it seems pretty silly.
To assume that these are being used for piracy is a bit paranoid. You're talking about paying $27k for the ability to "pirate" $6
Re:Legitimate uses forbidden now? - one argument (Score:2)
A devil's advocate moment -
For these end users it is a convinience to use this device to "pirate" stuff, not a way to save money. People lend dvd's all the time and if you have this device you can borrow a bunch of dvds and dump them into it - not because you cannot
Re:Legitimate uses forbidden now? (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:Legitimate uses forbidden now? (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:Legitimate uses forbidden now? (Score:2)
That depends whether by average you mean the median, the mode, or the mean. Typically average is used interchangeably with mean, although it can be used to describe any of the three.
Half of any group will by definition be below the median. However, it is very easily possible for more or less than half of a group to be below the mean, which is usually called the average.
[/pedantic]
Re:Legitimate uses forbidden now? (Score:2)
Re:Legitimate uses forbidden now? (Score:3, Insightful)
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 grea
Re:Legitimate uses forbidden now? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Legitimate uses forbidden now? (Score:2)
Re:Legitimate uses forbidden now? (Score:2)
Re:Legitimate uses forbidden now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Legitimate uses forbidden now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Uhhh... one problem (Score:2)
No license, no product.
Re:Uhhh... one problem (Score:2)
"Fuck you; I'm suing you for patent infringement..."
In order to include decss in your product you have to be licensed. They do not HAVE to license you at ANY cost - if you have a patent it's your call whether or not to allow others to use it.
You can make a DVD player without involvement of the dvdcca, but without the ability to play encrypted discs (ie just about every hollywood movie) you're not going to find many customers for your $30k "high end" product.
Re:Uhhh... one problem (Score:2)
Who says DeCSS is the only option? DeCSS used keys ripped out of a licensed player, and that is what they were sued for. There are other ways to decrypt CSS.
Re:Legitimate uses forbidden now? (Score:2, Interesting)
"The Kaleidescape Server can serve multiple movies simultaneously to Kaleidescape Movie Players throughout the home. The components interconnect over standard CAT 5 Ethernet cabling." throughout the home, or the internet
Stick this puppy in school or something.. sheesh or better yet on the internet. Thats why they are getting sued.
Re:Legitimate uses forbidden now? (Score:3, Insightful)
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 titl
Re:Legitimate uses forbidden now? (Score:2)
Certainly cheaper, with higher capacity storage and an RS232 port for advanced geekery. I'd love to have by-wire controls on mine rather than using the IR emitter I'm using now, but other than that these things are a lot easier to deal with.
Plus they're SACD players as well, which is cool.
I *have* a 2TB Snapstream server and some interfaces for moving video content around my house (either from my HTPC or from my receiver). It's nice for a lot of things. It's also a
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-e xperience) and at about 7:30 into th
Agreed. I can rip my cd's (Score:2)
No wonder the DMCA was passed and how Hollywood desperately wants to switch to DVD audio.
Control and setting up artificial monopolies indeed.
Re:Legitimate uses forbidden now? (Score:2)
Re:Legitimate uses forbidden now? (Score:2)
No, not really . . . They are suing the guy that makes the server not the person that bought the server. . . . and I think its even a little deeper than that. The evil movie protection folks don't want the producer of a movie server setting a precendent that it's OK to make a permanent copy of the movie on another medium. . . This would open the door to other movie-server appliance type devices that might be cheaper tha
Re:Legitimate uses forbidden now? (Score:2)
When CSS was implemented, DVD burners weren't yet readily available on the consumer market. CSS was designed to prevent copying from a DVD to a computer, which DeCSS solved.
Re:Legitimate uses forbidden now? (Score:2)
Multiple copies (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Multiple copies (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Multiple copies (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Multiple copies (Score:2)
Don't forget the disk cache, the copy of the soundtrack on the sound card, and the copy that was just put on Kazaa because if the F*$
Re:Multiple copies (Score:2)
They just need a different license (Score:5, Insightful)
If they had, they could have made a seperate, more restrictive, more expensive license.
Shooting themselves in the foot? (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Shooting themselves in the foot? (Score:2)
I guess Lucas is guilty of pirating his own films . . .
Kind of a weird interview that really doesn't say much about anything . . .
Re:Shooting themselves in the foot? (Score:2)
Cache.
Return.
Repeat.
Even so, I fucking hate the DVDCCA.
Re:Shooting themselves in the foot? (Score:5, Funny)
Not at all. They're simply taking business lessons from Darl McBride.
Re:Shooting themselves in the foot? (Score:2)
The most loyal, and the *richest* DVD buyers (Score:2)
Re:Shooting themselves in the foot? (Score:2, Insightful)
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:Shooting themselves in the foot? (Score:2)
All my DVDs are "cached" too (Score:5, Interesting)
Have I exercised fair use? Definitely. Have I broken some laws? Probably. But I'm not going to give up the fair use as a result.
And yeah, I should post this anonymously, in case the MPAA reads Slashdot comments, but dammit, we've gotta stand up!
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
Re:All my DVDs are "cached" too (Score:2)
It's fair use and a violation of the DMCA at the same time. If the law contained no contradictions, the courts would have nothing to do.
Re:All my DVDs are "cached" too (Score:2, Insightful)
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
Re:All my DVDs are "cached" too (Score:2)
Exercising "fair use" does not make you immune from prosecution. Repeat after me: fair use is an affirmative defense to copyright infringement.
Re:All my DVDs are "cached" too (Score:2)
On second thought, maybe MS likes this. More incentive for the media companies to jump on their DRM bandwagon.
Re:All my DVDs are "cached" too (Score:2)
Have I exercised fair use? Definitely.
Sigh. Do you actually know what fair use is [cornell.edu]? It's a defense to copyright infringement. It's (at least) a four element test. It's judicially applied on a case-by-case basis. What you're describing almost certainly ain't it.
It's a legal term of art with a specific meaning. You'd (royal "you") would be clawing my eyes out if I was talking about my "internet" made up of IPX workstations running Novell NetWare 3.
While I'm sure you want to believe that any use y
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
How long will equipment to "roll your own" exist (Score:2, Interesting)
With this type of goofy draconian suing going on and the supposed implementation of anti-copying hardware going into production on DVD drives for PCs, how much longer can we expect to have equipment available to consumers that will allow us to roll our own without either
Exact Copy? (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:Exact Copy? (Score:2)
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.
You're not alone (Score:5, Funny)
Dude! I think they roll their own too:
Ricky Williams [mpp.org]
Snoop Dog [usatoday.com]
Woody Harrelson [mapinc.org]
All college drop-outs, and Bill too (Score:2)
Re:All college drop-outs, and Bill too (Score:4, Interesting)
Computers:
Bill Gates (Microsoft) dropped out of Harvard, 1976
Steve Jobs (Apple, NeXT, Pixar) left Reed College in Portland, Oregon, after 1 semester
Steve Wozniak (with Jobs, founded Apple Computer)
Lawrence Ellison (Oracle Computer)
Michael Dell (Dell Computer) dropped out of the University of Texas
Other Business:
David Geffen (Geffen Records, Dreamworks SKG) flunked out of University of Texas, Austin, AND Brooklyn College, NY
H Wayne Huizenga (Blockbuster Video millionaire, owner of Miami Dolphins, Florida Panthers and Florida Marlins) attended Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan, for 3 semesters
Ted Turner (media mogul) -kicked out, I hear!
Ron Popeil (tv huckster, RONCO)
William Hanna (Hanna-Barbera)
To see the complete list, go to http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/7734/cdoaa.h
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.
Return to Top
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.
Going off the Deep End (Score:2)
The company has taken big steps to make copying hard and they appear to be in compliance with the license.
Suing them is going to both directly reduce sales, piss off a lot of hollywood peopl
$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:$27,000 for a 3.3TB system?? (Score:2)
You lose money on 25% of your customers, because they buy the lowend stuff you offer just to get people to buy your stuff.
You break even on 50% of your customers who buy your middleware.
You make your money on the 25% of your customers who buy the expensive stuff.
It' $27,000 because they: (a) can get $27,000 for them, (b) are recouping R&D costs, manufacturing set up costs, etc (c) also want to make a profit.
An example is that IBM used to make a huge LCD that they sold for $
I do too (Score:5, Funny)
Just make sure you don't get too exotic with chemical-dipping or cross-breeding of the commoddity product. I've heard that the formeldahyde can do nasty stuff to the safety factor and cross-pollination can introduce impurities in the final product. And try not to use bleached papers too because the chemicals released could cause damage.
What's the purpose? (Score:2)
It's certainly not to save the disc by avoiding using it, because at $54 per disc it'd be cheaper to simply buy a second copy and not open it.
Are we simply that lazy that it's worth paying three times the cost of the disc rather than to get up and stick it in yourself?
Re:What's the purpose? (Score:2)
Those kind of people dont want to bother copying 100s of titles, or searching around for just THAT movie that has to be somewhere....
People who look at the price dont buy a 27K Dvd-player. No matter what features....
Re:What's the purpose? (Score:2)
I wish I had enough money where I could spend nearly a years salary just to get rid of a shelf!
Just convenience (Score:2)
Could you DIY for less? Of course, that's not the target market.
Re:What's the purpose? (Score:2)
And I'm not sure how your other examples fit in either because they are not excruciatingly expensive compared to their non-lazy alternatives.
Shelled peanuts don't cost three times as much as shelled peanuts. Disposable diapers actually cost less than the time and resou
Re:What's the purpose? (Score:2)
Either that, or I'm just too much of a moron to admit I screwed up.
A quote to note (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:A quote to note (Score:3, Insightful)
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:A quote to note (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:A quote to note (Score:2)
Easiest Target... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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.
Almost double what it should be... (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh Baby! (Score:2, Funny)
Getting sued as well they should... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:The problem (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The problem (Score:2)
Re:The problem (Score:3, Interesting)
What software is that? Surely you don't mean DeCSS [lemuria.org], they dropped that battle. And there's absolutely nothing stopping you from ripping a DVD to your hard drive now, and burning it to DVD-R with the CSS encryption intact.
Re:The problem (Score:2)
I'll take your word for it, but "dd if=/dev/dvd of=MyDVD" I've done, and it plays just fine off the hard drive.
Re:The problem (Score:2, Funny)
The fact is that every computer DVD drive has a DVD Consortium mandated flash chip in it that scans for the CSS code, and if it finds it will refuse to copy it, and your so called "dd" tool is obviously an illegal copyright circumvention device (either that or the software you use to play the files has a DeCSS module installed).
Expect the helicopters shortly.
KFG
Yeah... (Score:2)
Nope, to move the flash chip security from the software level to the hardware level and to stop all those evil Linux hacker people from using dd to copy their precious!
Re:The problem (Score:2)
I almost hope they do sue me. First it would look hilarious to have a Slashdot thread as the single piece of evidence. Second, How they manage to enforce the US' DMCA laws outside of the US (I'm never travelling there anyway - I saw what they did to Dmitri [freesklyarov.org]). And third, MPlayer does NOT use DeCSS at all.
But yeah, I did laugh. Good reply.
Re:The problem (Score:2)
Re:The problem (Score:2)
That was actually my point. How is that different from what these Jukebox people are doing, besides having actually paid them for a license?
Re:The problem (Score:2)
Re:The problem (Score:2)
Actually, that's only mostly true. DVD-R "for General Use" have their lead-in area where the CSS keys are stored already overwritten when you buy them - so you cannot store CSS keys. However DVD-R "for Authoring Use" CAN store CSS keys. They are VERY expensive, I don't think I've ever seen a normal shop which sells them... Also consumer DVD recorders are incompatible to them,
Re:The problem (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Bad analogy... (Score:2)
It's ironic that because the company played within the rules of the consortium that they're being strung up by those very rules. There was another company that made unlicensed Nintendo games and won the right to do so in court (though I'm not sure how the DMCA would affect that) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_Tree [wikipedia.org]
The *main* probl
Re:The problem (Score:2, Funny)
Re:The problem (Score:2)
Re:The problem (Score:2)
"I don't think someone with $27,000 would "
should have read
"I don't think someone with $27,000 for a dvd player would"
Re:The problem (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:The problem (Score:2)
The law. The same thing that prevents me from killing somebody with that Ginsu that I just bought, and that prevents Ginsu from being sued for it.
Not Kaleidoscope's fault that somebody chose to break the law.
Re:The problem (Score:2)
They should sue GNU too:
dd if=/dev/dvdrom of=/video/biglebowski.udf bs=32M
because substantial non-infringing uses are irrelevant.
Don't give them ideas... (Score:2)
Re:The problem (Score:2)
Ripping DVDs is a crime (DMCA circumvention)... but how does it get noticed if it's in your own home? The last thing we need is the bad guys (the movie studios)throwing up their hands and saying "OK, have your fair use, but we need a way of checking for fair use...".
Just a random thought.
Re:IMHO (Score:2)
I thought it was misleading and pedantic. There is a common-sense difference between a temporary copy and a permanent copy. Geeks who ehxibit no common sense will just get laughed out of Congress.
Re:Mozilla style funding? (Score:2)