Dutch Court Lifts PlayStation 3 Seizure Order

An anonymous reader writes "The recent European import ban against the PlayStation 3 has been lifted. Reportedly, LG had already succeeded in seizing about 300,000 PlayStations, but a court in the Dutch city of The Hague overturned the prejudgment seizure order and told LG to return all PS3s to Sony. Sony uses the Netherlands as its main entry point for all European PlayStation sales, and can now return to normal. While the temporary ban has been lifted, LG can still assert its Blu-ray patents against Sony in a regular proceeding, which will go to trial on November 18. LG asks for patent royalties of $2.50 per Blu-ray device and believes Sony already owes it $150-180 million."

Comments

Bluray is a mistake

[devxo]

This is why I wish HD-DVD would have won. Bluray is patent encumbered, has mandatory DRM and is controlled by todays most evil firm Sony. Now it's too late and there is no competition anymore.. Say what you will, but Microsoft was fighting for the greater good with HD-DVD. Now we get all this shit from Sony.

This is what happens when we let money talk and assholes win.

Re:Bluray is a mistake

[Anonymous Coward]

The people in charge of creating new content mediums are the same people creating the content. We are never going to get a non-patent-encumbered, DRM-absent physical format.

Re:Bluray is a mistake

[rtfa-troll]

I checked his posting history, he's a big Microsoft fanboi, yes, should have his head examined. However he also posts in other subjects so he doesn't seem to be a shillbot.

This seems to be SOP for Microsoft shills. They post regularly and informatively on topics which are neutral for Microsoft. That of course gives them plenty of moderator points and keeps their karma high even when they are being moderated down. If you post information which is against Microsoft's interests you will notice some very interesting and wierd moderation (e.g. posts quite often fall massively early with several coordinated moderations within a period of seconds/minutes then often get moderated back up slowly later). I'd assume that this is part of a campaign to manipulate the Slashdot moderation system. I also assume that it's only partly successful since the moderating back up does seem to happen quite often. A very good reason for moderators to always browse at -1.

Re:Bluray is a mistake

[QuoteMstr]

This seems to be SOP for Microsoft shills. They post regularly and informatively on topics which are neutral for Microsoft.

So how exactly does your theory distinguish between "shills" and people who hold less hostile views of Microsoft of their own volition?

Re:Bluray is a mistake

[peppepz]

1) HD-DVD was an inferior technology.
2) HD-DVD was patent encumbered too, as any currently competitive method for recording data on a physical medium.
3) Blu-Ray does not have mandatory AACS for homemade discs - that's all you should care about unless you run a Blu-Ray pressing business.
4) Sony is by no means more evil than Microsoft.
5) The competition has run, it was fair and fierce, and in the end the market chose. Which is good for the users.
6) Microsoft couldn't care less about the greater good, as their history in the last two decades demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt.
7) The shit doesn't come from Sony, but from LG; sony is the "victim" here (notice the quotes).

BluRay is also encumbered by mandatory ads

[Shivetya]

The one issue I had with BluRay from day one is that too many of the distributors put required ADs for other movies on the disc which play without your intervention and do their best to prevent you from skipping them. HDDVD did not allow this, it required discs to proceed to the menu or just play. I think this one of the bigger reasons Sony used to convince the other distributors to switch to their model.

Re:BluRay is also encumbered by mandatory ads

[meerling]

Don't forget about the huge amounts of money they threw at hardware and media producers/distributors.
(Sony wanted a bigger chunk of the HD-DVD royalties, and the other companies said no, so Sony went and made a new version to compete with them, and then started paying off 3rd parties to provide blu-ray instead of hd-dvd offerings.)

Strange

[phantomfive]

A Korean company is suing and got an import injunction against a Japanese country in the Netherlands. Strange thing, this flat world.

Re:Strange

[clang_jangle]

A Korean company is suing and got an import injunction against a Japanese country in the Netherlands.

Dammit, just when I thought I'd gotten a handle on geography. Which Japanese country in the Netherlands is it again?

Re:Strange

[mangu]

Which Japanese country in the Netherlands is it again?

You know there was a big tsunami two days ago, right? And you know most of the Netherlands are under sea level.

Re:Supported Blu-Ray

[cbope]

Problem is, blank media is very difficult to find and expensive. I bought a Blu-ray burner when prices dropped to a reasonable level a couple years ago, but it died as a backup medium before I even got started because blank media were extremely rare. Even today, where I live, blank media is not easy to find. Sure, you go to the store and you can see stacks of blank CD and DVD media... but no blank Blu-ray discs to be found. Typically, you have to order online and the prices are ridiculous. I believe this was done intentionally to discourage the situation that became of DVD, where the DRM was cracked relatively quickly and creating copies became trivially easy to make. I believe they restrict the quantity and keep the prices high in case a full compromise of Blu-ray DRM is eventually made making copies trivial, but due to limited quantities of media it makes it easier to control unlike DVD where media is cheap and broadly available.

I do have a Blu-ray player at home that I use for movies. I buy Blu-ray vs. DVD when the price difference is nominal and I rarely buy first-release. I enjoy the vastly superior sound quality of DTS Master HD and Dolby TrueHD audio since I have a fairly high-end home theater setup. Sure the picture quality is also a big improvement over DVD when you have a good setup, but as an audio and music junkie it's the sound that I bought Blu-ray for, not the picture.

Re:quite interesting

[unity100]

just report those comments with their urls to slashdot admin email, saying that some misuse of moderation points may be afoot. they will handle those people.

It WAS a Dutch court, not a European one

[FlorianMueller]

I saw this post, which links to my blog, and then the comment above from Half-pint HAL claiming it's a European court that happens to be based in the Netherlands. However, Half-pint HAL is Full-scale WRONG on this one. It was a purely Dutch proceeding. A ruling issued in Breda, Netherlands, was appealed to the next higher Dutch instance in The Hague.

No European court is based in The Hague. The European courts are based in Luxembourg (Court of Justice of the EU, General Court of the EU) and Strasbourg (the European Court of Human Rights, which is not an EU institution but connected to the Council of Europe, which includes non-EU countries like Russia).

There are international courts in The Hague, such as the International Criminal Court and the Permanent Court of Arbitration. Those aren't European courts, however. Neither EU nor otherwise European.

Re:We are NOT under sea level

[Anonymous Coward]

He said sea level. not sea. He is correct. I live below sea level.

Just don't buy it

[Runaway1956]

There isn't a Blu-Ray device in my house. Or at work. I don't own one, and I'm not going to own one. It's really pretty simple. If Sony couldn't sell Blu-Ray to chumps, they would stop producing them. As long as chumps are willing to pay for Blu-Ray, Sony will keep producing them!

Re:We are NOT under sea level

[Runaway1956]

Translation glitch, or reading comprehension problem? I can't decide. Maybe if I were multi-lingual, I would be better equipped to deal with a post that looks stupid. Damn, why couldn't I have gotten the multi-lingual gene, instead of the good-looks gene?