MPAA Sues DVD Chip Manufacturers

WhatAmIDoingHere writes "The Motion Picture Association of America has sued two chip manufacturing companies for selling integrated circuits to manufacturers that produce non-approved DVD players."

Comments

Re:It's OK

[Izago909]

I mean, it's not illegal to modify your own hardware now is it?

It depends on where you live.

Isn't this a licensing issue

[zymurgy_cat]

If you RTFM, the manufacturers were sued because their licenses prohibited them from selling their chips to non-CSS licensed buyers.

I'm not saying I'm a big fan of the MPAA, but this sounds like a tempest in a teapot. It's not like these companies somehow came up with some workaround and the MPAA was jumping all over them.

Fanatics who don't want to RTFM are welcomed to mod me down.

Re:Lawyers Profit!

[squiggleslash]

which is the copy-protection system used for DVDs

Probably worth noting that it's the access control mechanism (as defined by the DMCA), not copy protection system. It doesn't prevent anything from being copied.

It does make it more difficult for people to produce region free DVD players though, because only authorized DVD players may access the DVD (legally bypass the ACM), and a DVD player will not be authorized if it's region free, at least in the US. (Yes, there are hacks for many DVD players, but they're not supposed to be there, and more importantly, if a DVD manufacturer advertised the feature they'd lose their license instantly.)

It's all about price fixing in the end. And it's legal. Don't you just love it?

Re:Absurdity and Orwellianism

[Scanline]

What rubbish! If you want to be a "pirate" (and let's call it something else, please), you can copy a DVD any time you want. Just do a bit-by-bit copy, and voila! A copied DVD. These manufacturers do not enable theft in any way.

I you're talking about copying to a DVD-R, a bit-by-bit copy would produce an unplayable DVD. The CSS key is pre-recorded and thus the copy can't be decrypted.

Re:It's OK

[RLW]

No distribution required. Just having something that by passes the encryption is enough. My understanding of the law is this, If you break an encryption scheme which is used to protect copyrighted material then you've broken the DMCA.

Piracy Isn't Just a Naval Term

[Speare]

[stock rant]

The press rightly continues to use the word 'piracy' for illicit copying and distribution of original materials. Some think it's a new phenomenon, and hard to square with the traditional image of the Jolly Roger and swashbuckling robbers-at-sea. The use of the word 'piracy' as signifying an unauthorized copy of a manuscript is hundreds of years old, long before modern Copyright doctrine was developed. From http://www.ninch.org/forum/price.report.html:

• There was very little trust in the print medium when it was first developed--it was seen as unstable and subject to piracy and fraudulent copying. Authenticity was hard to guarantee: indeed, the term "piracy" was first used by John Fell, Bishop of Oxford, to describe certain pernicious practices of early printers and booksellers. A "pirate" was someone who participated in the "unauthorized reprinting of a title recognized to belong to someone else." "Stationers" eventually emerged as the trusted practitioners who were placed in charge of various aspects of publishing--practices we would now recognize as printing, publishing, editing, and bookselling. Stationers worked out the conventional practices of making books, and thus made printing a viable economic enterprise with the elaborate complexity of producing a book eventually invisible to all but the practitioners in the trade.

That's Dr. John Fell (1625-86), who was given the title of Bishop of Oxford in 1675.

[/stock rant]

Now, the word "theft" is the word I object. One cannot steal an idea, one cannot steal the text of a book, one cannot steal the image of a mouse. Even if it is copied and the copy is somehow proven to impact the sales payable to the original creator, it is not theft. The original creator is not denied the chance to continue to sell their creation. It is a crime to infringe the creator's rights of monopoly, but it is not "theft." Rightly, the courts have also recently been pointing out to the MPAA that their aggressive rhetoric is squarely outside the definitions of law.

Re:Sold to DVD Makers

[djohnsto]

Zenith DVB318 and Momitsu V880. They both upscale DVD's to HD resolution and output the unencrypted result over analog component cables. The DVD consortium (and the content industry in general), state that everything must be either encrypted with HDCP (when using digital outputs like DVI or HDMI), or messed up with Macrovision. The only exception is for component outputs (where the Macrovision algorithm doesn't work), so they contractually limit the legal output resolution over component to 480p for DVD's.

People who were early adopters of HDTV's (i.e. they ONLY have component inputs for HD, no DVI or HDMI) are pretty pissed about the whole situation.

Re:It's OK

[Smallpond]

Bull...

(b) ADDITIONAL VIOLATIONS. (1) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that (etc.)

and

(c) OTHER RIGHTS, ETC., NOT AFFECTED. (1) Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title.

Nothing about possessing or using technology that bypasses encryption. Its legal to have, use and modify, just not distribute. Kind of like the GPL.

Re:No it's not

[Overzeetop]

No, it's not.

1) Modifications you make yourself are NOT illegal under the DMCA.

2) Distributing those modifications (parts or instructions) IS illegal.

3) Making your modifications does not relieve you of the burden of copyright law.

How did you get modded +5 informative?

So, no more TBCs?

[Ralph Spoilsport]

A Time Base Corrector strips all that crap out, and gives you a raw video signal, which is very necessary if you're editing in a professional video suite.

However, if you put a DVD into the line, and run it through a TBC, you ca nthen re-record it onto a digital target, and make as many copies as you want. Sure: there's some loss, and a good TBC costs several hundred bucks, but IT WORKS.

The MPAA is so full of shit. Grrrr.

RS

Re:Lawyers Profit!

[malfunct]

Regional dvd's were developed so the movie industry could release the dvd in the US before they release the movie to theaters abroad. It also supports regional pricing so that they can better match the price to the demand in the area and not have to compete with themselves in other areas. Finally as you point out they can more easily divide distribution rights.

That said it still pisses me off in general.