Kaleidescape, a company that makes hard-drive-based DVD jukeboxes, has been cleared of charges that it violated the DVD DRM license. This matters, a lot.
You can't make a legal DVD player without getting a license from the DVD-CCA, a secretive organization run by the studios and major tech companies. DVD CCA makes you promise that your DVD player won't have any features that it disapproves of, regardless of whether those features facilitate piracy.
Kaleidescape made an expensive DVD jukebox that, for $27,000, would rip 100 DVDs and put them its hard-drive, with additional DRM (groan) to keep you from copying those DVDs any further. The DVD CCA said that this device should be illegal, even though it's clear that this isn't a piracy tool. You'd have to be the world's dumbest pirate to spend $27,000 to pirate 100 DVDs — you can manage the same trick with your existing PC, just by downloading some free software. What's more, the copies you make at home won't have DRM on them, so you can keep on copying them.
Even so, the DVD CCA argued that just having this feature — a DVD player where you can watch your 100 favorite movies without getting up from the couch and changing the disc — should be illegal, unless they approved it. It's like Ford telling you that you're not allowed to plug your iPod into the car-stereo until it can figure out a way to charge you money for doing so.
Three years into the lawsuit, a California court has exonerated Kaleidascape. The DVD CCA says it's going to appeal — and get this statement from DVD CCA counsel William Sloan Coats: "While not pleasant, DVD CCA must enforce agreements and require adherence to specifications to protect the interests of all CSS licensees." Wait, did that guy just admit that his employers licenses are unpleasant?
The DVD CCA filed the suit after Kaleidescape marketed a video server that uses an elaborate system to transfer DVDs encrypted with the Content Scramble System (CSS) onto its hard disk drives. The content is recorded with CSS intact onto internal hard disk drives in order to provide convenience to users and prevent multi-generational copies.
(Thanks, Kurt!)
