Kaleidescape CEO Speaks Out About CSS Lawsuit

An anonymous reader writes "Engadget has an interview with Michael Malcolm, the CEO of Kaleidescape, which you might remember as the high-end DVD jukebox manufacturer that was sued by the DVD Copy Control Association for violating its CSS license. Despite the fact that anyone who can afford a $27,000+ DVD jukebox also usually ends up buying hundreds of movies to load onto it, the DVD-CCA wants them to redesign the Kaleidescape to require the presence of the physical DVD disc in the drive during authentication and playback. Besides defeating the whole purpose of having a jukebox in the first place (none of their jukeboxes allow for copying, streaming, or sharing DVDs), Malcolm says he can't find any clause in their CSS license which would require them to implement this "feature" anyway and they're about to file a counter-action against the DVD-CCA."

Comments

27k? 400 dvd carousel $300

[winkydink]

And $50-$60 per dvd for storage costs? Figure on a PC, your hdd storage is $0.60/Gb. I figure that a lot closer to $5.00/dvd not $50. How does this guy figure on charging an order of magnitude more?

I don't get the benfit of a system costing $27-100k, when you can put something together for 5x less.

When you are trying to put a lock on air ...

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

You will find yourself taking messures that in any other situations would be ridicoulous. This happends with copyright, it's an UNNATURAL law, and so, it's unenforceable. If you try to charge people for the air they breath, or for what they think about, you will find that this are basic freedoms of the human been, and that, because of their nature, it's allmost impossible to measure / control / quote them. But there is a HUGE bussines built arround copyright low, and the big boys making tons of money out of it won't just let it go, so, expecto more and more ridicolous ideas and restrictive methods in the future. They just won't stop.

ALMAFUERTE

Re:When you are trying to put a lock on air ...

[Repton]

ObDaveBarry:

But the greatest Electrical Pioneer of them all was Thomas Edison, who was a brilliant inventor despite the fact that he had little formal education and lived in New Jersey. Edison's first major invention in 1877, was the phonograph, which could soon be found in thousands of American homes, where it basically sat until 1923, when the record was invented. But Edison's greatest achievement came in 1879, when he invented the electric company. Edison's design was a brilliant adaptation of the simple electrical circuit: the electric company sends electricity through a wire to a customer, then immediately gets the electricity back through another wire, then (this is the brilliant part) sends it right back to the customer again.

This means that an electric company can sell a customer the same batch of electricity thousands of times a day and never get caught, since very few customers take the time to examine their electricity closely. In fact the last year any new electricity was generated in the United States was 1937; the electric companies have been merely re-selling it ever since, which is why they have so much free time to apply for rate increases.

The argument should be simple

[erroneus]

"Prior to playback, the data from the original DVD is decoded into memory and stored there for a period of time. In this instance, the memory is magnetic media rather than memory chips on the system board."

I don't see a violation especially as no method for extracting the decoded data exists to my understanding of this device. I think the DVD-CCA is being [surprisingly?] overzealous with their issues here. But who knows... something good could come of this if the DVDCCA loses as I suspect they will.

Mac OS X has "jukebox" feature, too

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this different from the feature in Mac OS X which lets you drag copy a mounted DVD to your hard disc for playback later? You just need to have the physical DVD disc in the drive the first time Apple's DVD Player plays the hard disc version to prove that you own the physical DVD. I guess it must copy the DVD CSS key to your hard disc somewhere.

Re:They're afraid of what - DVD swapping?

[NetNifty]

The only thing I can think of is that if this is produced, it might encourage other companies to create a product like this one but at a lower price and targetted to regular consumers (ie not millionaires), where renting DVDs and putting them on these devices, or buying then sticking on ebay might become a problem for them.

Re:DVD CCA is almost right

[norminator]

Kaleidescape does store the DVD copies encrypted on the server. It makes a bit-for bit copy. The decryption is done at the player. Everything streamed across the network is encrypted.

Re:What they are afraid of

[foomanji]

If you view 100 DVDs/year, you might consider renting from Netflix.com instead of buying so many of them. Buying 100 $10 DVDs per year: $1000. Joining Netflix.com at $18/month: $216. I like saving $784/year.

Re:What they are afraid of

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason I subscribe to Netflix is because when I watch a DVD, I usually don't want to watch it over and over again. If people really watched stuff over and over again, Seinfeld would still be the number #1 show on television.

Re:In related news...

[Anonymous Coward]

You think you're joking. Authors in the UK are trying to get the law changed to give them a cut when books are resold:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1461505, 00.html

Re:What they are afraid of

[foomanji]

I actually have tried both for about a month. Netflix has been flawless. Blockbuster has consistently sent DVDs out of order (per my queue) even when the top items were available immediately. Also, Netflix appears to have a slightly more comprehensive selection of independent films.

Re:What they are afraid of

[TiggertheMad]

If someone can afford a $27,000 system (starting price) I really doubt they're going to be worried about recouping their $19.95 investment on a DVD or screwing with eBay to do it...

Hell, I can't afford a 27k system to watch movies on and I wouldn't bother selling stuff I copied on E-Bay. I buy movies for between $10-20. I might get half of that back. My time is worth more than that.

The only time I have any real urge to pirate movies, is when I have to deal with fisking region encoding BS, CSS, and Macrovision. These things irritate me to the point that I want to make sure that whatever company has troubled me by using these 'features', doesn't make a DIME off of me.

I'll gladly pay for a physical copy of a movie I enjoy. Just don't tell me I can't watch a copy of a movie from china that Miramax hasn't yet ruined through editing, use my PC to watch it, or force me to sit through some sutpid 'coming to dvd soon' ad, and you will get no trouble out of me...

Re:What they are afraid of

[TGK]

I can't think of 825 movies I'd bother loading on to the thing.

Hell, I'll take it one step further. If I could flat out HAVE any movie I wanted I don't think I'd have 825 movies on the list.

99% of what's out there is poorly thought out, poorly implemented, poorly written tripe.

The 1% that's left over, that's what I'd buy and load up on my hypothetical jukebox. Even then, I doubt I could sell Casablanca on Ebay for much of anything.