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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
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 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.
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
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.
[
Yes, and if you live in Amerika as I do, then you are guilty of publishing information that describes how to bypass copy-protection measures. I believe that is also prohibited.
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.
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.
Can I sue them for My First 50 Dates?
If you think
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.
That part has never been tested in court. Actually, very little of the DMCA has been tested. If I recall, the only prosecution was that of Elcomsoft and they were acquitted. Would courts convict someone for giving a speech, writing a paper, or posting a mesage that informed people about how to bypass access controls? I suspect they wouldn't -- but until we know whether speech is considered a form of "trafficking" the chilling effect of the law will continue to be felt.
Make cheese not war 8:)
[ I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance ] -- Isaac Asimov
MPAA Sues DVD Chip Manufacturers For Making Things People Want To Buy
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!
The GPL is a contract.
No, the GPL is a license.
KFG
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?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
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
Err, whoops, you're correct, but that doesn't really detract from the rest of my post.
. html: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breach_of_contractL icense), because it differs so greatly from traditional software licenses.
[ The English-language definition of contract is somewhat broader than the American legal definition, but, I was attempting to speak in legal terms. (I _did_ disclaim my non-lawyer status already, though *g*). Contracts _can_ be merely implied, if wikipedia is to be believed; I would call the GPL a weak contract in this sense, since you're agreeing to abide by the rules and regulations set forth in exchange for permissions granted to do things that may otherwise be prohibited, but, it's probably more properly called a license, to distinguish from the traditional oral or written agreement to negotiated terms of exchange. ]
These are some good resources about contracts and contract law:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/topics/contracts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract
http
The exact nature of the GPL has been subject to some debate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
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
Try reading the law before you spout off about it. See Section 1201, which provides: "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
The anti-trafficking provisions are in addition to the anti-circumvention provisions. See also any published analysis before pontification.
Make cheese not war 8:)
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.