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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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FTA: Sigma and MediaTek make chips to decode the Content Scramble System, or CSS, which is the copy-protection system used for DVDs. Their licenses require that they sell only to other CSS-licensed companies.
Let me get this straight. The content scramble system can be disabled with chips sold to companies with licenses to distribute systems with copy-protection? I smell another SCO-styled lawsuit. When will people learn? These chips could be valuable in the development of technology to prevent copy theft, and even then, since these chips are only being sold to licensed distributors, I see that the MPAA, or whoever is in charge of these licenses, could have simply yanked the licenses instead of wasting precious court time and money... that is, unless, the MPAA knew damn well they didn't have a case for revoking these licenses, so they figured they had better make an example of these companies by suing them for lost revenue. It's almost parallel to a police department charging another department for sending drugs or illegal firearms to a third party for analysis. It's totally trumped up! IANAL, but I think with these kinds of cases going around the block, I would like to be one! Lawyers are the only ones who profit from these hyped up dramas!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
It's still pretty easy to make DVD player region-free. I mean, it's not illegal to modify your own hardware now is it? Is this where they are going now?
Hmmm.
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
Aw man, and here I thought they were learning the right lesson from the RIAA's example.
*attemps to keep a straight face*
--- "Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view." ~ Ben Kenobi, 'Return of the Jedi'
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.
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?
Oh dear god, how could a Reuters article make such a stupid mistake?
"...which claims its members loose billions of dollars annually to copyright piracy".
*Sigh*
"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.
Guns: Sacred and necessary
Devices which inadvertently allow consumers to exercise fair use rights: Dangerous and damaging
"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.
If you live in America, it is indeed illegal to modify your own hardware in order to bypass copy protection or access controls on copyrighted works. Technically, if you take a Sharpie to the edge of a copy-protected CD to get it to play in your PC, you've committed a felony. Download a "crack" or no-cd "fix" for a game? Go to jail. Thank our friend the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which prohibits any circumvention of copy protection or access controls -- and also makes it a crime to "traffic" in the technologies to do so.
Make cheese not war 8:)
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.
-- Fugacity: Confusing chemists since 1908
There are still people worrying with playback control on DVD players?
Media Player Classic
http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/
VLC
http://www.videolan.org/
Pick yer platform
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Who are these DVD makers and what models are they talking about. Pirating minds want to know.
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.
We could dress up as Americans and throw tea in the harbor... or sand in their gas tanks... or grenades in their toilets... or...
No, I don't think I'm out of control. I think the industry is out of control, and the government's going right along with it (both major parties).
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?
1 word... never.
More words... Where there is money to be had there is conflict. The MPAA represents lots of money. Even if the courts come down hard on the MPAA it'll figure something else out.
I didn't get to be head of the department because I'm a moron.
I got to be head of the department because I..I..I.I.I'm not moron.
They are suing them for violating a contract. Do you have a contract with Ford forbidding them from selling cars to drunks? I doubt it. But the MPAA apparently has a contract limiting who the chip manufacturers can sell their chips to, and the MPAA claims the chip manufacturers are violating that contract.
"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
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.
Huh?
The MPAA owns CSS. They license it to these companies, and say "You can use our CSS stuff, but only sell it to people on this list". Sell outside the list, break the agreement, get sued. That's what's happening.
This is more like Apple suing Real because Real is using Apple's DRM without Apple's permission, though that's not the same either, but it's closer.
They've been selling these chips forever, and the MPAA has been happily collecting it's royalties for CSS. What I wonder is, why now?
That is, is the REAL MONEY motivating this - that is, the electronics manufacturers who make approved DVD players?
Sony's getting it's ass kicked in the market by WingWong's knockoff brand, because the knockoff isn't crippled. It may be a cheaper, lousier machine, but in the end - it plays that DVD your cousin Beauregard sent you from Region 5.
Hmm.. Despite the rhetoric around here, the entertainment industry only makes pennies to the tech industries dollar. Sony (the maker of CD and DVD burners) is much much larger than Sony (the publisher of DVDs and PS2 games) - hence the 'paradox' that protects us. They will never lobby to outlaw recording and duplication tech, since that's which side their bread is buttered on.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
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.
[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:
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.
[
What if you modify the hardware in such a way that it does not facilitate copying but does get around other "access controls". The last I checked even the DMCA does not guarantee the movie studios the right to create these little geographic monopolies called "regions". The problem is that most of the hacks to make a DVD player region free also disables macrovision as well. If someone were to hack the firmware of a player to enable region free access but left the macrovision copy protection in place(as long as were at it lets also disable the crap that keeps you from skipping past the FBI warning, etc) I think a good argument could be made that you in fact have not violated the DMCA.
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.
I love how one month they're (the MPAA) claiming the highest profits they've ever had.
And the next month, "Piracy is ruining the industry!"
I just can't understand how these people think.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
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.
yeah, we're getting offtopic, but...
With tobacco, the interesting part is the "choice" involved. Personally, I don't have a problem with the fact that cigarettes are harmful to one's health, but rather the addictive power of nicotine. That's a legitimate avenue to pursue, in my opinion, as opposed to the ridiculous restrictions on advertising and other means by which government is trying to eliminate smoking.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
There will always be a way to copy movies/music and other media. You can never stop it, or my cousin that works at the chip company and sells them under the table to whoever wants them.
LAWS DONT WORK so quit wasting your time and money and quit bitching. Drugs are a great thing to compare this to, they have been illegal for many moons but they are still everywhere because DOING THINGS THE LEGAL WAY DOESN'T WORK! Laws aren't scary until you get caught. No matter how hard you try things the legal way, it will never be as effective as hiring mercenaries instead of lawyers. Maybe we should start saving the money we waste on your cds and dvds and have you all killed by our own mercenary...now that is a plan.
If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up. - Comedian Mitch Hedberg R.I.P. 03/30/68-2/24/05
Can I sue them for My First 50 Dates?
If you think
I'm sure they've got some harebrained legal theory, but the MPAA is hurting its member companies just to hold up legal fictions.
Probably yes. This is a contract case, not a copyright case. The MPAA claim they signed a contract preventing these suppliers from selling the chips to unlicensed manufacturers.
Using a gun analogy, if a gun maker signed a deal with the US Gov, so that they were to be the sole purchasers of a new gun the manufacturer had designed, this would be akin to the manufacturer then selling to another country on the side.
The MPAA claim they have exclusivity, not under the DMCA, not under old copyright law etc, but under a contract between them and the defendants. This is nothing more than that.
They could just sent a browser popup or a Messenger window pop up to every IP address on the internet telling the user that the RIAA has filed a lawsuit against them for violating the DMCA by using technology invented after 1965.
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)
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Pretty soon you will have to buy DVD players from the motion picture companies, and, lord willing each one will have a different standard and cost several hundred dollars each. Phase 2 will be that you have to buy your television set from motion picture companies as well and these too will all be different and incompatible from one another.
It will be a Federal crime, to hack either DVD players or TV's to do anything other than what you pay the motion picture companies to permit you to do. On/off switches will be made illegal.
MPAA Sues DVD Chip Manufacturers For Making Things People Want To Buy
Contracts are considered legally binding. The GPL is a contract. If a court deems a contract to be either enforceable or nonenforceable, it sets a precedent, which is sort of pseudo-law, but you generally do not go to jail or the federal pen for breaching a contract, unless the State, the Federal Government, or a private party files criminal charges against you. Criminal charges show up rarely in business, except for things like shoplifting, fraud, and tax evasion; usually, it's just civil charges, and those are pretty much all private party money exchange (and sometimes a way for the big guy with the good lawyers to screw over the little guy who can't afford a nice lawyer).
I know you wanted a lawyer, but I just like the sound of "I, Anal!" (or is that Aye, Anal! Or.. Eye-Anal!)---don't you?
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
Thanks to Intellectual Property, the feudal system lives!
Hunt thou not in the King's Forest, knave! Double not thy clicks, nor singly if for commerce they be. Scribe ye not the holy GIF format, nor the code of Linux employ within thine enterprise, lest ye suffer sorely in combat with the royal tort attorneys!
Among other choices... Provision+ DVD Decoder I have it on good authority that it works like a champ, although I personally would never own anything like this that would allow me to circumvent a content protection system. :-)
On-on!
The MPAA suing chip manufactures for allowing "pirated" copy protection to be played on DVD players? This only shows me how clueless MPAA really is about how DVD's are actually copied.
Well, it is legal where I live (Norway), but many others can be thrown in jail for this. Nevertheless, I'm not doing it: Even if I can make myself a region-free DVD player, if they don't respect me as a customer enough to sell me one without that crap, they're not getting my money. Those are my terms. I know that it may imply that I can't play some DVDs that refuse to play on region-free players, but again, I don't care, I won't be interested in those DVDs anyway.
Come to think of it, these companies sound like they may be worthy of my business. Anybody know where I can get a region-free DVD player for my box, that is, one that fits in a 5.25" slot?
Actually, I think I could even use a DVD burner... Anybody know of a company that sells that? It needs to work well under Linux.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
The CSS license pact has aided the success of DVDs because it has provided protection against illegal copying to copyright owners of movies, television shows and other content sold on DVD.
Yeah, it protects the HELL out of em...
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
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Just some points:
1. Home DVD burners (including consumer DVD-R and DVD+R) cannot use CSS encryption. They just physically are not able to do so because the media does not support the burning of the CSS key.
2. Professional burners do exist that can use CSS. These require different media (consumer media won't burn in these) due to the wavelength of the laser being different and a section on the disc to receive the CSS key.
3. The cost of the professional burners and media are considerably more than the consumer units.
The end result is that the studios think their stuff is worth protecting, while the consumer's isn't. It just makes me feel all warm inside.
For the PC, you can decrypt and burn a DVD to a blank disc. This disc will be playable in nearly ANY DVD player Because of the country I live in, I cannot tell you how to do this.
If you hook a PC up to a TV, or vice-versa, some video cards/drivers are now enforcing Macrovision copy protection.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
FYI The GPL is not a contract, it is a license. There is a difference which has been written about by the FSF as well as Groklaw.
What the MPAA is doing to these chip manufacturers sounds a lot (to me) like what Microsoft got into trouble with the DOJ for doing. Enlighten me if I'm way off base... W.E.P.
to vote with your wallets? I'm suggesting, not buying DVDs of MPAA products. If the industry thinks it's losing money because of chips that are too feature-rich, wait til they lose money due to lack of sales period.
On certain DVD players, usually made by not very well known Chinese companies. It's not illegal to do so, but those manufacturers may have breached their contract with the DVD-Concortium (wish gives the license to make DVD players) by allowing this.
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
(actually, URLs). /. story about this subject which teases us by not disclosing:
This the second tantalizing
exactly WHO are the makers and vendors of the liberalized equipment containing the subject chips?
(I quit looking after the first 50 posts.)
Man, its getting bad when even news articles spell LOSE wrong....
You can lose money.
A shoe string can come loose.
They mean different things...and are pronounced differently...PLEASE get it right...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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.
In theory you're correct. Reality is, however, far different. If a client comes in and is willing to pay you several hundred dollars an hour to pursue their BS claims (ala SCO) what is the incentive to say no? I did a trial once and calculated, roughly, that the combined billing in the room was close to $10,000 an hour. People are not going to walk away from that simply because someone else thinks it might be "fivilous."
Too often litigation happens because of blood-lust. Disputes can be settled amicably, if everyone agress to share part of the pie, but everyone wants to take the whole thing. Lawyers simply profit off of their greed. No more, no less.
The reality is your logic could also be used to stop all war on the planet. After all, if all governments said NO to war, it'd stop. If you really want to end frivilous lawsuits, then you have to change the system to discourage frivilous lawsuits. 'Tis the only way.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Somehow you overlooked the killer:
1201.(a)(1)(A) No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
If "No person shall circumvent" doesn't outlaw use, what does it do?
(a)(1)(A) doesn't care about fair use as it doesn't reference copyright at all -- it never defines this violation as any form of copyright infringement. So, sure, your use might be fair, but that just gets you off the hook for infringement. If you circumvented, you still violated (a)(1)(A). It's a blatant and grotesque end-run around fair use, no question, but I wouldn't want to rely on (c)(1) to defend against it.
"Copyright is a legal monopoly. Maybe someday we'll ditch the free market for information..."
You do realize what you just said is a contradiction in terms?
It is a monopoly, it is a free market of information... well which do you think it is?
3dinfo@maficstudios.com
This phonetic spelling thing ought to be successful, then, if everyone pronounces the words differently. Eh?
Mark Twain simplified spelling