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DVDCCA Sues Maker of Luxury DVD Jukebox
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."
The DVD Copy Control Association is just upset that they didn't think of it first.
:)
If they had, they could have made a seperate, more restrictive, more expensive license.
This is not about piracy; it's about control. People who blow almost $30,000 on a glorified DVD player have no need to pirate the movies. This is about the movie studios keeping 100% control over how the end user uses the product they have paid for. If a company is allowed to make an expensive jukebox, then a company will be allowed to make a cheap one. Which means individuals will be able to buy them, someone might install a copy of a movie they didn't pay for, someone might figure out how to get the annoying ads off of the beginning of the movie, etc. The studios just don't get it. They fought the VCR from the beginning, and they are continuing to fight every new version of the home video recorder. Ultimately, these stupid efforts at control cost the studios a lot more than they could ever gain from it, but this is what happens when a business is run "by the numbers" with no regard for the customers.
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.
Many Bothans died to bring you this sig.
I guess the lesson to be learned is: don't get the license. Same deal with SCO, being a paying customer doesn't get you any loyalty, only legal snares to entrap you in.
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.
Many Bothans died to bring you this sig.
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.
So if you are a poor individual you get sued directly, but if you are rich and can afford $27k systems, then the company that is struggleing to get a product to market gets sued? Well you can't blame them for being smart about the targets.