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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."
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So it is no longer legal to add additional functionality to a device you are creating? There goes my idea of building a more secure website than my managers asked for, can't have that.
Damien
it said proved the two were selling microchips to companies, whose DVD players lack what the MPAA called "appropriate security features.
Give me a break. All of their "security" features have been easily broken by widely known software/hardware out there. In fact the only thing that "security features" do is make the general public annoyed.
Take for example the TV/VCR combo I use in my bedroom. I have no need for a huge TV in there as I have two larger TVs elsewhere in the house. I hooked up an old DVD player to it. The TV thinks that I am trying to copy DVD's and enables Macrovision. There is no way to disable the Macrovision (at least from what I can find on the net) for that DVD player.
Thus I am stuck w/removing the macrovision using available software and reburning so I can enjoy the DVDs I have purchased.
I thought it was illegal (in the U.S. at least) if you bypass a copy protection technology. Or does the DMCA only apply if you redistribute the info?
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Are you saying that now we can, for example, sue Ford because they produced the car that was purchased by a drunken driver who killed someone?
A book publisher can sue Xerox because one of their copy machines was purchased for the purpose of making illegal copies of books?
A camera maker? Companies that make pens?
that produce non-approved DVD players
...or something?
Of course...because approved piracy/ region modding is okay, but heaven forbid it be done without approval?
"The MPAA said the suits against Sigma Designs Inc. and MediaTek Inc. followed testing that it said proved the two were selling microchips to companies, whose DVD players lack what the MPAA called "appropriate security features."
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.
And what's with all this Orwellian "piracy" anyway? Those manufacturers don't conform to the precise specs the industry wants, so off with their heads? How about what the consumer wants? Oh, right, we don't count.
"The MPAA, recognizing the damage the advent of digital file-sharing did to the music industry, has waged an aggressive campaign against movie piracy."
I still haven't seen a single piece of documentation that can dirrectly link a damage to the music industry as a result (even in part) by file-sharing.
Your mammas flamebait.
I read the article, and I have to agree this is probably a valid lawsuit. This is purely contract law, not copyrights or patents. The contract the manufacturers signed said they would not produce or sell devices that could be used for copying DVDs. The manufacturers didn't hold up their end of the deal. Yeah, it stinks, but that's the way it is.
In other words, "We didn't learn from the backlash against the recording industry, so we'll do it again. Only harder."
How about suing tobacco companies for producing cigarettes that people choose to smoke, or gun manufacturers for making weapons that are used to commit crimes? Pretty crazy world, isn't it?
"If the chipmakers violated their licenses, they have broken the law"
No, they have not broken the law, they have violated the terms of a contractual agreement. If they had broken the law a government entity (fed/state/county/etc) would be filing the charges not a company.
And DVDs would have been less successful if CSS didn't exist? There is proof of that?
Haven't we seen studies claiming that the record industry has not been damaged, e.g. that sales are only lower than the RIAA's flawed and over-optimistic projections? Even studies claiming that file sharing might have a positive impact on record sales?
It seems to me that many journalists these days don't actually investigate or research anything, they just take industry or political press releases and report the spin as fact. Or am I too cynical?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Actually, they have not broken any law, unless there is some yet unrevealed aspect. As near as I can tell, there is only the allegation that they've breached some agreement. Since we don't know the particulars of any agreement, the veracity of the allegation is unknown.
This is all about control. The movie industry wants complete control over the distribution of movies. DVD regions is about controling the distribution of movies. Yes control allows them to maximize profits. They might be able to make even more money with a more open and free distribution, but that is not guaranteed. So to guarantee healthy profits they demand complete control. It is safe and mostly risk free.
We know litigation is the last gasp of industries with outdated models, why else would you actively want to sue the people you are in business with or YOUR CUSTOMERS?
The meteor has crashed, the dinosaur is dying.
Speaking with a family friend who is getting involved in indie film production, the big studios are banking more and more on the one profitable hit out of the ten movies produced and on DVD sales and rentals than ever. Neither of us go to the movies very often any more to see anything produced by a big studio (the last movie I saw was Eternal Sunshine... and before that? Lord of the Rings 3?). I'd just as soon keep my money and see student films or whatnot over repackaged fluff. It all makes it to HBO within a year anyway.
This is one reason I think the studios are balking at going digital, for while it appears to slash their distribution costs, it also enables theatre owners to use the equivelent of an iTunes Music Store for their first-run movies.
Sorry dinosaur, comet has hit. Why sue chip manufacturers? The only image your damaging is your own, makes fuck-all difference to any with either 1) a modicum of nerdibility or 2) anyone with a hobby that is of lower abstract cost than watching fabricated reality (meaning people flock to most benefit for least effort; if the MPAA continues alienative customers, customers will choose other form of entertainment and forget Hollywood ever existed).
It's Darwiniaan (sp?): adapt or die. Lawsuits are not indications of adaptation.
There has GOT to be some legal precedent set somewhere that says "You cannot be sued for making or selling something that is legal when someone else does something illegal, unlawful or otherwise infinging on the rights of others using it."
I should not be liable for murder selling a knife used to kill someone. I should not be liable for murder for selling a car that someone used to kill someone. I should not be liable for copyright infringement for selling a photocopier to someone who uses it to copy books. And I certainly shouldn't be liable for infringement for selling legally licensed chips to someone who misuses them... and neither should these chip makers.
Surely there is legal precedent to such a simple argument.
Cigarettes will fuck me up, no matter what I do. so selling cigarettes is like selling cyonide sweets, not normal sweets that may make you fat if you eat too many.
Guns were designed to kill things, so I suppose they shouldn't really sue the manufactures for making guns, they should sue the government for letting them.
Media-players should be designed to play media, not prevent you from playing media.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Why don't these companies just say they don't make DVD chips/players. The RIAA sells CDs that violate the CD specification and it gets away with it because it doesnt sell 'CDs'. Anyway the MPAAs methods should be illigal, region coding is totally over the line and you are fully within your right to disable/bypass it for fair-use (ie buying DVDs abroad)
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Note: The DMCA is more than four years old. It isn't Bush's fault. That's not to say that he wouldn't have signed it, I believe he would have. But.. Clinton did sign it and I think Kerry would sign it too.
The scary part is that there are no politicians who care about what consumers (citizens by the way) are being forced to accept to defend the big corporation's revenue streams.
If we had the same group of scumbags in government back when the car was invented, I'd probably own a ridiculously overpriced horse and carriage today.
Or selling rights to be the exclusive distributor in a specific market with little or no recourse for customers who want DVDs in that market to shop elsewhere? In other words, selling rights to price fix?
Well, few producers actually distribute, but in any case, does it matter who's not competing against who? If it's all down to contractual arrangements, how is it a different breach of contract for one distributor to issue region-free DVDs compared to, say, a distributor selling to outlets and advertising heavily in a region they're not supposed to be?It really boils down to one thing: distributors want to be able to monopolize a market rather than risk people comparing prices in some other market and importing craploads - either directly through the world wide web, or indirectly through grey-importers. And if it forces someone to buy the same DVD twice, both times at an uncompetitive price, when they move, then all the better.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
If the thinking behind the DVD region encoding is simply to prevent a producer selling DVD's in competition to a distributor, then I can only think that the distributors can't write contracts. If I were a distributor, and I wanted exclusive rights to distribute a film, I'd damn well say so in any contract, and I'd specify damages if that clause was broken. Then if the producer attempted to make another deal with another distributor in the same region, I'd sue.
I'd suggest that distributors are, in fact, very good at writing contracts. One only needs to look at book deals to see this. I find it hard to believe that a film distributor is completely incapable of writing an exclusive distribution agreement into a contract and enforcing it, whereas the book publishing industry has no such problem.
Thus if I buy a region-free DVD player (as I have) I fail to see how I have "stolen" anything from anybody. I certainly haven't stolen from the producer so long as I buy a copy of the film I watch; if the producer has a good contract, he still gets his royalty cheque. If the producer does not have a good contract, then the only person "stealing" anything from anybody is the big bad distributor.
The ways of gods are mysteriously indistinguishable from chance.
Note to citizens: We're permitted to change the law.
With all due respect to Larry Lessig...
Note to large organized groups of citizens which have the capability to buy or strongarm enough congresscritters: you are permitted to change the law.
Note to the rest: you are still screwed.
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Well of course it's a monopoly. Copyright is a legal monopoly. Maybe someday we'll ditch the free market for information and the prices of DVD's will be fixed by government committee. But until then, yes, the producer of a work has a monopoly on its distribution, and can sell pieces of that monopoly (regional distribution agreements) for whatever the market will bear.
If this is still a problem for you, you should remind yourself that it's only a show and you should really just relax. If you don't like what they are selling it for, then vote with your pocketbook and don't buy it. This isn't food, it's entertainment, and the government shouldn't get involved in what entertainment costs.
Cavaet: Copyright extentions still suck and are completely inappropriate, and, in my opinion, are nothing more than corporate theft from the public domain. But, while a copyright of reasonable length is still in effect, the owner of the copyright should have complete control of the work.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
If the chipmakers violated their licenses, they have broken the law [...]
If one of the contract provisions is illegal, the party to the contract is not bound by it, and may violate it with impunity.
Unless there is verbage to the effect that some rights granted to that party conditional on his performance on that provision, and are voided if he can not perform on his side due to laws to the contray, he doesn't lose the rights granted. The illegal provisions are by default separable.
At least that's how I, who ANAL, understand it.
The primary function of the CSS and its licensing regime is not to inhibit unauthorized copying (although it does make it - along with fair use - slightly more difficult for the non-techies among the general population).
The primary purpose is to support both shady and explicitly illegal business activity: Regional pricing / price fixing and inhibition of international resale, regional distribution timing and availability control, and regional content censorship.
This could be construed to make adherence to the contract terms that require sale of chips only to licensees who build products that adhere to the regional coding schemes unenforcable.
= = = =
I just realized: It might be possible to bring a suit against the MPAA/CSS scheme in international courts under GATT!
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
From TFA, second-to-last paragraph: "The MPAA, recognizing the damage the advent of digital file-sharing did to the music industry, has waged an aggressive campaign against movie piracy. [emphasis mine]"
This is a damned bad sign. I know it's popular to bash on the media, but really, they're supposed to print objective fact rather than opinion. The fact that this article simply claims that P2P has damaged the music industry, rather than attributing it as an opinion of someone else's, says to me that we've already lost that particular part of this fight.
Really, they could (and should!) have said something like "The MPAA, agreeing with the music industry's claims that file-sharing has caused it massive damage, has waged an aggressive campaign against movie piracy." By phrasing it as they did, Reuters seems to be claiming that it's simply an established fact that P2P has hurt the RIAA.
And it's probably too late to fix that.
Kai MacTane: Web developer for hire in San Francisco
OK. Show me the 'copyright expiration field' in the DVD/CSS format.
Actually, I don't KNOW that it's not there, because I've never looked at the specs. But I'm absolutely sure it's not, because otherwise we'd have seen 'clock hacks' to bypass "protection" long ago. The lack of a 'copyright expiration field' might be taken as an indication of intent to keep extending copyrights forever. (I suspect it's really negligence, but I'll bet the MPAA never gets sued over their negliegnce, only chipmakers.)
I don't disagree with you. This is indicative of another problem the US is refusing to face. Back in 1992, Clinton tried to make health care reform a national focus. AS A NATION, we turned our backs on the whole issue, and it has come back to bite us badly. IMHO, health care costs are in large responsible for migration of jobs overseas. Not that I necessarily cared for Clinton's plan, BUT WE REFUSED TO EVEN DEBATE THE MATTER! Our bad!
The entire field of intellectual property NOW needs the same kind of national debate. We are in the process of screwing over our national competitive posture by pretending to stay with existing ways.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Guns: Sacred and necessary.
...
I know you were being facetious. But yes they are.
"God created men. Sam Colt made them equal."
Disarming the law-abiding doesn't solve the crime problem.
Even if you lived in a fantasy universe where you could de-gun everybody including the crooks, there are arrows, swords, spears, clubs, sling, rocks,
And if you managed to disarm everybody and everything, would you have stopped crime and violence? Absolutely not. You'd just have put everybody at the mercy of the strongest bullies. Kiss civilization goodby - it's back to feudialism, or worse.
What guns do is make it possible for anyone, strong or weak, young or old, male or female, black, white, yellow, or brown, to be about equally deadly - with minimal expense and a few hours of training.
The net result is a massive and sustained reduction in violence. The good guys were never a problem. The bad guys mostly learn to stop attacking the good guys (and stick to stealing their stuff when they're not there to watch). The few who insist on attacking an armed population repeatedly are soon wounded and taken "out of service".
And on the political level, the government with an armed population is much less able to oppress it.
A vote for citizen disarmament is a vote for violent crime, tyranny, genocide, and the rule of psychpathic strongmen - at both the wholesale and retail level.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way