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Tenative Ruling Against Kaleidescape in DVD CCA Case
An anonymous reader wrote in with an update in the long drawn out legal proceedings between the DVD CCA and Kaleidescape, a manufacturer of a video jukeboxes. Despite a victory by Kaleidescape in 2007, they ended up back in court in November 2011. The DVD CCA insisted that ripping a DVD was in violation of the license granted to Kaleidescape; Kaleidescape disagreed since their jukebox made a bit-for-bit copy of the disc rather than first decrypting the contents. Unfortunately, in a preliminary ruling, the court agrees with the DVD CCA. Kaleidescape has released a statement.
It's funny, whenever someone suggests this sort of thing, they usually get modded down.
And yet the judge basically took the DVD-CCA's side and copy-pasted it into his ruling word for word. He ignored basically every argument Kaleidescape put forth. That's rare in court. Not only that, but the judge has done a major about-face since the last ruling in 2007. What changed in the intervening time? How do you go from a judge ruling that Kaleidescape had made good faith efforts to ensure their products were compliant, and were in fact compliant, to what came out today if money didn't change hands somewhere?
How do you go from a judge ruling that Kaleidescape had made good faith efforts to ensure their products were compliant, and were in fact compliant, to what came out today if money didn't change hands somewhere?
Who needs money when you have incriminating photos?
...
The Judge has received some re-election funds from the MPAA
Just because you don't like the ruling, doesn't necessarily mean it's contrary to the law.
That being said, the MPAA and RIAA have been instrumental in writing the laws, so...
If I were a judge I'd never rule in favor of something I know to be wrong, excessive, or unreasonable. Modern copyright suits like this one fit all three descriptions. If the law says otherwise, let them impeach me. Then I might lose my cushy prestigious job. Then I'd say hey, at least I put something on the line to try to bring some sanity to our legal system; how many others did the same?
You wonder why freedoms are eroding?
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Until they declare it illegal to resell DVDs or they tie the content to a specific piece of hardware for playback.
The bittorrent pirates couldn't dream of a better justification in the popular mind.
The copyright interests enjoy some public sympathy as long as they can portray themselves as the poor victims of rampant "theft" who just want a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. This mostly depends on the general public being ignorant and not considering it worthwhile to read up on the subject and learn about its nuances. Thus, what is generally known about them comes from propaganda (aka "PR") sponsored by them. If the cartels clamp down too hard, no amount of PR will prevent it from being generally known that they are a bunch of assholes and control freaks who will never be satisfied.
What you suggest is, sadly, the kind of thing they would do. It's also the dumbest thing they could do. Seems like a balance to me.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Wanted to pick up a copy of Tucker: The man and his dream today. So I check out used prices on Amazon and Paypal. Both selling used from $60-90. Daaaang. Well I wanted to avoid DRM and have a nice portable copy, but $60 is a bit much for that, so I figured I'll get it for $10 on iTunes and only play it on iDevices. Eh.
Well it's only for rent at $4. Every single comment in the reviews mentions that it should be for sale. Huh... oh maybe Amazon is selling it. Dang, $4 rental there too.
What's the point in making it rental only? It's not like the makers profit off the used DVD market, or did one of them buy a pallet of them? Besides that, the movie is from 1994, it should be $0.99 and not "new release" price.
Oh well, I'm not going to pirate it... I'm going to wait for it from the library. If I can't own it I won't pay to rent it. Total cost to the movie studios? -$10.
There you have it, one good rant deserves another.
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I think nothing. Bluray was never remotely a consideration for me. I refuse to support it with a single dollar for a single second. Bluray has encryption that keeps changing which requires firmware updates and they are progressively moving towards Internet enabled players to verify playback licensing and retrieve encryption updates.
I won't touch the shit.
It is marginally better than DVD anyways. The way I see it, if I paid for the DVD copy, I am entitled to the higher resolution copy. The argument that the higher resolution copyright is different and requires extra compensation if complete fucking bullshit. By that argument, music could be sold differently depending on the bitrate.
Besides, a quick Google search shows that over 70% of all Bluray titles are region free anyways, that it is trivial to bypass, and it is not firmware based.
Give it enough time and you will see region free Bluray players as well.