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Ruling Prohibits Kaleidescape From Selling, Supporting Movie Servers
Stowie101 writes "Kaleidescape has lost its drawn-out legal battle with the DVD CCA. A judge has issued a permanent injunction that prohibits the sale and support, including product updates, of existing DVD movie servers. 'As part of the injunction, Kaleidescape and its dealers can no longer offer technical support for products that are already in the field, meaning existing servers can receive no updates or repairs.' Kaleidescape has filed an appeal and 'believes that under California law the injunction order should not come into effect unless the California Court of Appeal affirms Judge Monahan's decision.'"
What is Kaleidescape and why should I care?
(Yes, I know there's Google. But a bit of context would be nice.)
"Manufacturer of a movie server that digitally stores and organizes your Blu-ray and DVD movies, and makes them available from any television in your home."
So a ripping station.
My only disagreement is this:
Just because the DVD won't be available until the fall is not justification to download it freely. Oftentimes cable channels like HBO want to play the show over-and-over several times (for subscribers) before releasing it to everyone else. Movie studios do the same thing (release to theaters first; DVD later).
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
So, I can do this with Apple TV. At one point, I did this with my XBox.
Things like Slingbox have allowed you to stream your media to your TV for years.
Why is this industry incapable of recognizing that users would prefer to have a juke-box with their movies? Especially people with kids I should think.
In this case, it sounds like the product tried very hard to not be helping illegal copying.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
So this rule forces people to use solutions that could actually remove copy protection or share outside of the home?
With employees like this the MPAA don't need enemies
This is one of the areas that the DMCA creates an illusory right. The law specifically states that the right to fair use, which includes time and format shifting, is not to be affected by the law. The law also prohibits anyone from assisting in removing copy protection.
The key is that the ability to remove the protection for fair use _must_ be available and reasonable for the average person who has paid for the product, or the right to format shift in accordance with fair use doctrine is purely illusory. This is pretty common, and when it comes up in contract law, it's pretty straightforward - you can't give illusory rights.
IA(of course)NAL, and even lawyers will disagree, but the law explicitly states a right (fair use) that is not to be altered, and then effectively alters that right by making it illegal for nearly everyone to obtain access to it.
I would like to see the law struck down - or at least the traffiking in copy protection removal devices and software removed for any fair use right, including personal use.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I see this as just another out-of-control (I won't go quite as far as bought off) California judge that the 99% of us would be far better off if s/he were removed from the bench permanently. With judges like this I'm surprised that we ever got as far as being allowed to have our own electric lights. S/he surly would have killed of the VCR if ever given the chance, likely along with the cassette and reel-to-reel decks as well if they had recording abilities. S/he would likely take out your DVR as well, given the chance.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
That's a very fine point to put in it.
It is true that this chapter of the law does not grant fair use rights, but it is part of Title 17 (Chpt 1201 to be exact), not a standalone title.
The summary provided by the US Copyright Office attempts to address this condition, and utterly fails:
"This distinction [between unauthorized access and unauthorized copying] was employed to assure that the public will have the continued
ability to make fair use of copyrighted works. Since copying of a work may be a fair use under appropriate circumstances, section 1201 does not prohibit the act of circumventing a technological measure that prevents copying. By contrast, since the fair use doctrine is not a defense to the act of gaining unauthorized access to a work, the act of circumventing a technological measure in order to gain access is prohibited"
The problems is that since there is no mechanism for the CCA to grant copy authority, copying for fair use by the public requires that "unauthorized" access be granted. This isn't like the DAT recorders which implemented copy once which allowed fair use copies. Without access, no mechanism short of access to the material is available to the public to make a fair use copy. The law makes it impossible to obtain the method from anyone else. It's a key flaw in the logic of the text, and one that has, afaik, not been tested, at least in part because nobody who has a business model based on removing CCA has enough money to do so.
The right given in Title 17 is, therefore, made illusory by the law itself. I don't know how the courts view language in a law versus an interpretation of an illusory right in a contract, but there is a certain parity to the conditions.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I worked at RealNetworks for a while, on a doomed project called RealDVD. There were going to be two versions of RealDVD: a software-only version you could run on your laptop or whatever, and a software stack to be licensed to consumer electronics companies.
The reason RealNetworks thought there was a chance they could do this was: Kaleidescape. Kaleidescape made such a product, got sued, and won. There was a clear legal precedent.
For the next section, you are getting this third- or fourth-hand. I wasn't there for this. This is what I remember of how it was explained to me. I apologize in advance if anything here is incorrect.
What did Kaleidescape do? They signed up as a licensed and authorized customer of the official CSS unscrambling code, and built a licensed DVD player. Theirs just happened to have a big box full of hard drives that cached the disc images. (They had a quiet and stylish head-end unit for your living room, and some sort of big noisy box or boxes for the hard drives, which you would put in your basement or whatever.)
Once it was clear what Kaleidescape was up to, they got hit with a lawsuit for violation of contract. They were sued by the authority in charge of CSS, the CCA. In court, Kaleidescape pointed out that they had obeyed the contract to the letter: the contract didn't say anything about not copying the discs, or about the disc needing to be in the drive at the time of playback. (After they signed the contract, they received the technical specs, and the technical documents said "you can't copy the discs and the disc must be in the drive at the time of playback". Kaleidescape argued in court that this cannot be legally held to be part of the contract. The judge agreed.) Kaleidescape prevailed in court.
So, RealNetworks looked at this and said: clear legal precedent that this is legal to do. We had better do everything exactly the way Kaleidescape did it. So we ripped a bit-exact copy of each DVD, making no attempt to re-encode in MPEG4 or anything like that. We encrypted each disc image. We even made the UI pop up messages saying things like "remember, you can only do this if you own the disc". (It goes without saying, but RealNetworks also licensed CSS decryption, with all the hassles that entailed.)
Now, while Kaleidescape charged US $30,000 for their first model, and only US $10,000 for their "inexpensive" model, RealNetworks was going for a $300 price point on the consumer electronics product, and a $50 price point on the Windows software. No doubt this raised the level of concern from the MPAA; instead of a few rich people buying Kaleidescape units, the common people could buy RealDVD en masse.
The Windows software product shipped before we had the consumer electronics version ready to manufacture. It was sold by download, with an introductory price of $30.
The discussion here on Slashdot was nearly unanimous: hah, what morons those RealNetworks guys must be. Why would anyone buy a product that encrypts DVD images and is useless as a ripper, when we can just get Handbrake and do whatever we want?
Despite the /. scorn, the general consumer reaction to RealDVD was very positive, and sales were brisk.
Sales lasted about a week.
The MPAA picked a venue to sue RealNetworks, and asked the judge for an emergency injunction to shut down all sales of RealDVD. The judge (the same judge who ruled on the Napster case) granted the injunction.
This time, it wasn't a breach-of-contract suit. The DMCA gave them a big hammer and they used it. The judge agreed: DMCA says no copying, you guys are copying, you lose. There was more to it, but it was the DMCA that really did in RealDVD.
I wanted a RealDVD player in my living room. I believed in the product. It was not to be.
So when I saw this news, I figured the MPAA had used the DMCA to shut down Kaleidescape. Imagine my surprise when I found that it wa
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely