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.

Comments

Obviously

[bobstreo]

The Judge has received some re-election funds from the MPAA

Re:Obviously

[Moryath]

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?

Re:Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, they are in a lot of counties. This particular judge was elected - it took about 30 seconds of googling.

Re:Obviously

[Ramin_HAL9001]

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. .... 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.

I think you put way too much faith in the general public's attention span.

If the MAFIAA were to use their political clout and pass laws that made it illegal to watch a movie without a specific piece of hardware, which they have already done in a way, using region codes and forcing DRM on downloaded music, people will just sit back and take it, and continue to repeat the propaganda spoon-fed to them. "Its good for the economy, they have the right to make money in whatever way they want, pirates are bad, baaah baaah baaah baaah."

No one notices just how many liberties we have lost over the past 20 years (ironically, more and more so as technology has improved) because no one knows the technology well enough to know when a politician is passing yet another law to take their freedoms and property rights away. They think, "as long as I don't vote for those big-government Democrats, I'll be safe." If only it were that easy.

Re:Huh?

[gnapster]

They're those flat shiny things that ISOs come on.

DVD ? DVDead.

[billcopc]

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.