Media Server Manufacturer Wins in Court

whoever57 writes "The DVD Copy Control Association (DVD CCA) has lost its bid to shut down Kaleidescope, which manufactures media servers that can copy DVDs (along with decryption keys) to built in hard drives. The DVD CCA claimed that this violated the terms of the contracts that control DVD-related equipment because the DVD need not be physically present for payback. However, the judge ruled against the DVD CCA on the narrow grounds that part of the specification of the Content Scrambling System was not part of the overall license agreement. This may open up the market for similar devices."

Comments

Typo

[Anonymous Coward]

Kaleidescape not Kaleidescope (kaleidescape.com)

Re:Typo

[Workaphobia]

Er, guess I shouldn't be a hypocrite. That one and this one are both "related to grammar or spelling mistakes" as well.

playback, not payback

[whoever57]

I guess the editors did not notice my typo, but it should be:

the DVD need not be physically present for playback

Re:playback, not payback

[Scooter's_dad]

I guess the editors did not notice my typo

...or they would have tried to pass it off as one of their own.

Payback's a bitch

[scdeimos]

I think

... because the DVD need not be physically present for payback.

should read

... because the DVD need not be physically present for playback.

Re:Payback's a bitch

[Tatisimo]

Give him a break, he's a cowboy, maybe he's thinking of duels and revenge (a.k.a. payback). Don't we all wanna unload some payback on them evil companies?

Re:Payback's a bitch

[BootNinja]

If you want real news, perhaps you should try frequenting a real news site.

Re:Payback's a bitch

[TheRaven64]

The component cost is not high. A 750GB hard disk costs about £150 retail, but 500GB disks can be as little as £70. Pop three of them in the machine, and you've got 1TB of RAID-5 storage (marketed as 'ultra reliable') for £210. DVD drives cost almost nothing now, and MPEG-2 decoder chips are under £1. You could probably build the entire device for about £300, if you paid retail for everything. In bulk, you could easily make the RRP £300. Since the average DVD is somewhere between 4GB and 9GB (a few are smaller, but most are in this ballpark), it would store 100-200 DVDs, which is significantly more than I own. If you didn't care about redundancy (after all, the DVDs themselves are a Backup), you could cut the price by just doing JBOD over two disks.

The $30,000 unit, as I recall, also includes in the price having a person insert all of your DVDs into the machine and rip them for you. It caters for the very top end of the market. The commodity marked hasn't seen this kind of device, because no one wanted to challenge the DVD CA. Now someone has done, I wouldn't be surprised if they start popping up. Tesco were selling a DVD player for £9 last time I looked, so there can't be much margin left on pure players. If you build a product that you can charge a slight premium for, then this is generally a good thing for a manufacturer.

i thing their point is

[jpellino]

that without the DVD present. playback's a bitch.

Re:iTunes

[mrchaotica]

I wouldn't be so sure about that... unlike CD ripping, which existed in iTunes long before the music store was opened, Apple is already pushing paid, DRM'd, movie downloads. From Apple's perspective, adding DVD ripping is not just unnecessary (because people accept iTunes as-is), but counterproductive (because it would cut into the iTunes store movie revenue).

Odd argument.

[eddy]

Assuming this is correct, the argument seems very weak, almost completely counter-intuitive:

"In closing arguments Coats warned that a ruling in favor of Kaleidescape "could open the flood gates to copycats. Prices could come down to that of a laptop for products that are not as elegant as Kaleidescape's but have the same basic functionality," Coats said."

So by ruling for the defendant, the judge would open the floodgates to innovation, increased competition and more jobs in the market?

Yeah, I can see how one must warn against a ruling with evil results such as those.

It's fairly simple...

[sdo1]

Anything I BUY should be MINE to do with what I please within the privacy of my own home or in/on my own property (with obvious exceptions such as causing physical harm to others, etc.). And I should NOT be illegal in any way to provide the tools to allow me to exercise that right.

I'm thrilled that the courts are slowly, every so slowly, starting to realize this. They need to look past the fact that it's a DVD and realize that its a collection of bits on a piece of plastic. I understand copyright and why it's not legal for me to distribute it to millions or to re-sell copies of it, but copyright is limited not absolute. Having a copyright on something does not mean that you get to dictate how and where it is used in perpetuity.

If I buy a piece of furniture and I want another one like it for another room, should it be illegal for me to pull out my tape measure, buy some wood, and build myself another one just like it?

If I buy a small print from a local artist to hang in my bedroom, should it be illegal for me to scan it, manipulate the colors, and print another copy that matches the decor in the guest room?

If I have a VHS tape that I'd like to preserve, should it be illegal for me to capture it, do a little noise reduction and clean-up on the video, and burn it to DVD?

And if I have a shelf of DVDs, should it be illegal to rip them and stick them on a server in my own home. Should it be illegal to provide the tools that allow me to do that? Of course not. It's no more illegal than to make the hammer I use to put together the copy of the chair.

-S

Re:It's fairly simple...

[QuantumG]

If you're going to compare your right to copy physical items to your right to copy works, why not go the whole hog?

If you like my chair and ask me if you can make a copy, should I refuse?

Should it be illegal for me to allow you to make the copy?

Does the existance of an autocarpenter make a difference?

We have a right to copy. The law of copyright is ment to be a deal.. we give up our right to copy and the creators get a short incentive to make productive works. I don't like this deal anymore.. I want out. Who's with me?

Re:It's fairly simple...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, in support of these arguments, I suppose if you could reproduce the movie by means of recasting and stuff you might have an argument, or you might not, since you didn't get permission to reproduce the script. It's too touchy of a subject, but I'm agreeable to copy protection toning down.

Sure, when I was 15-16, I pirated tons of songs on napster. Then napster died, and I didn't pirate as much anymore. One day, I got sick of all the miscellaneous songs on my drive, and simply deleted them all. Over the course of the last few years, I've bought over 100 cds. I could have pirated the whole albums easily, but I enjoy lossless quality, the art, booklet, etc. I buy the CD when I know the artist deserves my money. most of the CD's I bought I already had on my computer, but I looked at it as "try before you buy" type deal. I knew what I liked, and went out and bought it.

Even more recently, when I got the iPod, I ripped all the CDs to itunes and put them on there. now, I won't rip to WMP, because it puts in non-removable 2 second gaps (which microsoft refused to respond to when I inquired), nor will I use any format with restrictions on how I burn a mix, or modifies my files in any way. They're my files, and I want them how I want them. I still buy CD's though, as I don't want any DRM from itunes. however, perhaps it's time I download hymn, to that end.

My point being: I, a consumer, will not buy anything, or use any product, that will restrict the use of my music after I purchased it. I'm not giving it out for free. I use it on my ipod, computer, and if I need to, CD form, and I like to be able to reburn it without gaps or limit should my cd become scratched. I didn't buy a circular piece of plastic with a mirror on the bottom. I bought music.

Re:iTunes

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello DVD-ripping in iTunes! And not a moment too soon as they just started shipping the Apple TV.

Am I the only one who doesn't react to every story by thinking "But how does this relate to Apple?" It's lame and I'm sick of it, frankly.

Re:iTunes

[AusIV]

The primary purpose of the iTunes music store is to generate content to help sell iPods. If it becomes legal to copy DVDs to computers (and iPods), I wouldn't be surprised to see iTunes allow the ripping of DVDs to an iPod compatible for mat.

Price point

[gnetwerker]

These devices cost $27k for a "base" system, and $4k per player. On the one hand, I suppose this means they had enough money to litigate the issue. On the other hand, one can only hope that some competition brings the price point down.

Silly example?

[lilomar]

For instance: if I buy a movie on tape, and later want to digitize and burn it on disc, no harm is done to anyone - so, no ethical problem. This should be legal.

But if, say, the MPAA wanted to force me buying the movie again on dvd, based solely on the idea of copyright, this is immoral gouging. They do this.

On the other hand, if the version on dvd is much better (clean sound, image, extras), I might want to buy it again, *if* the price is reasonable. And this is a valid concept as well. This isn't a "silly example" it's common sense and exactly the kind of thing that the MPAA is trying to inhibit.

The tide is turning

[pwizard2]

It seems that the pendulum is reversing direction; now it is swinging back against the media companies. (the RIAA is having to work harder in court, and now this) Hopefully this will be a long-term trend and not just a series of flukes.

Effectual copy protection?

[hedwards]

I think that this is good. I don't think that it will last, but I think that this is good. The copy protection on DVDs has always been weak. One could as soon as DVD burners came out to the masses copy single layer DVDs without any sort of cracks, a bit later came the DL DVD burners allowing all of the rest to be copied.

All that the content management stuff ever did was prevent playing the movies in a non approved player. Really insignificant, except to Linux users, because any DVD player at all would play the copies just fine.

Re:iTunes

[shmlco]

And sell more AppleTVs to play them back with...

This should have been obvious.

[mmell]

Kaleidascope's device doesn't actively decrypt the content (or specifically enable decryption for other hardware/software) - it merely makes a faithful copy of the original content, as licensed to the end-user at time of purchase. Sounds like 'fair use' to me!

Without some external form of CSS decryption software (such as libdvdcss in the Linux world), the data are no more accessible from a hard disk than they were from the original DVD. If the capacity for decrypting CSS-scrambled exists, than the medium from which the content originates is inconsequential - viewing, copying, etc. will all work identically regardless of the source medium.

Fortunately, a judge or jury somewhere got the point.