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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.
The Judge has received some re-election funds from the MPAA
Technology could be so much better if the damned companies would just get out of our way:
-Let us tether our phones. Don't make us jailbreak/root the things to get the bandwidth and features we pay for. The phones are perfectly capable, so stop stifling us!
-Let us watch our movies on whatever device we want, whenever we want, without having to crack/decrypt or download someone else's cracked/decrypted copy.
-Embrace streaming. The infrastructure is there. The technology is mature. Drive-in theaters died a long time ago, and so will megaplexes. Deal with it. Stop fighting Netflix. Stop trying to cling onto your antiquated distribution platform.
I'm sure I have other rants, but I won't be able to think of them until my vein recedes back into my forehead.
sig: sauer
Just let both parties put up a binding contract of injunctive relief. Then they submit it together with an undisclosed amount of money to the court. Whichever side submitted the most wins and their contract is enforced. The other side gets the money, minus, say, 10% that go to taxes. Problem solved: better, predictable justice for all instead of the travesty of "who bought the judge" all the while pretending that there is such a thing as fairness.
They're those flat shiny things that ISOs come on.
I'm quite familiar with the Kaleidescape system. It's effectively a DVD jukebox that uses disc images instead of physical media. In 2011, it's a very outdated piece of technology, but it remains one of the few idiot-proof systems out there. Pay gobs of money, plug it into your TV, fiddle the remote and you're off to the races.
From the very beginning, the system has required users to rip their own DVDs. You don't download shows to it, you have to pop in the disc and let the system create its own image. No disc, no love. Sure, you could toss in a burned disc, but by that point the encryption has already been broken. The only way you can willfully circumvent copyright laws with this thing is by renting/borrowing a movie, ripping it and returning the disc.
That said, if someone has the whimsical income to afford a $7000+ Kaleidescape system, they can probably afford to buy their movies legally. Once again, the movie industry doesn't have a goddamned clue.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
What the MPAA wanted to make sure is that a Kalidescape system didn't become an everyday item. The technology is Kalidescape is not that difficult, and today you can do the same with:
1. NAS storage server
2. Computer with ripping software of your choice
3. XBMC running on cheap receivers.
4. Download movie/tv info from tvdb.com/IMDB/etc.
All of the above can be put together for well under $1000.
What a company cannot do in the US is put all of the above together into an easy to setup package. Kalidescape got away with it by exploiting language in the CSS licensing agreements, but it appears that they will finally be shut down. Just another reason to never do business in the US.
Every other media player out there has skirted the law by not providing the crucial component (codec or decrypting library) as part of the default product sold in the US. When you connect the product, the necessary components are downloaded from a country that has no such restrictions. Kaliedescape and one other now defunct media management company were the only companies who tried to legally build a compliant product. Unfortunately media companies in their always unwillingness to adapt, don't see their efforts in that way.
The only way you can willfully circumvent copyright laws with this thing is by renting/borrowing a movie, ripping it and returning the disc.
The newer Bluray models don't even allow that. You still rip it to hard disk rather than accessing the disc each time, but you have to purchase disc vaults that only allow you to play content secured inside. Now sure, you could cut the things open to retrieve the discs, but I doubt it would let you add a new disc to a slot it thought was already filled, and at $7000 each for 320 discs, it costs more for the unit than it did to purchase the movies themselves.
May I just note that the word is "tentative", not "tenative"? Been bugging me from the get-go.
That said, if someone has the whimsical income to afford a $7000+ Kaleidescape system, they can probably afford to buy their movies legally. Once again, the movie industry doesn't have a goddamned clue.
This is the key point that makes the whole argument absurd. Many of the Kaleidescape buyers don't even deal with ripping DVDs themselves, they give their collection and/or just tell the HT installers what they want on it (who then go buy a crapload of legal DVDs) and pay someone else to do all of the work for them. Total plug-and-play system for rich people, they probably only ever watch a fraction of the movies they own, and I'm sure somehow the MPAA will argue it's costing the industry billions of dollars per year...
I think you meant tentative. Does nobody use spell check these days?
DVD CCA must be the most idiotic organization in the world. Why would you sue a company who provides the equipment to your boss's villas, yachts and planes? As someone who works in the industry and installs these systems II can guarantee you that every single one of the movie studio executives will have a Kaleidescape system in every single property or yacht they owe.
And who would seriously slash out between $10 000 and $1 000 000 on a Kaleidescape system just so that they could make copies of DVD's they don't owe? Who are the DVD CCA trying to kid?
Kaleidescape servers are really expensive equipment from my experience. Normal consumers are not buying these devices. Kaliedescape servers are only installed in businesses and multi-million dollar houses where generally only legal media is used. It seems to me that they are being manufactured, marketed, sold and (in general) used in a fairly law-abiding spirit. This law suit does nothing but aggravate the situation.
Maybe they need to move their headquarters. The right to back up media is enshrined in Canadian law, because we OWN our media, not "license" or "lease" it. So unless the *AA companies want to GUARANTEE to replace damaged or lost media AT NO CHARGE TO THE CONSUMER, they have to suck it up, give up on DMCA-type legislation, and go home with their tails between their legs like the whipped dogs they are. :P
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
They only need to win once for any stupid shit they wish to do. We need to win every single time to stop them doing stupid shit. Ergo, this war cannot be won :( All rights will eventually be lost.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Dated technology? have you touched one lately? It's far more advanced than any of the crap any geek can build at home. They did a full DVD rip to try and satisfy the stupid MPAA.
The only thing that makes it dated is they tried like hell to keep the industry happy. The DVD images still have their CSS encryption on them, Which was their stupid mistake. You cant keep organized crime happy.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.