DVD group proposes copy ban

[painkiller]

http://www.digitaltvdesignline.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199905707

[lordsmurf]

Just because they put something in their rules does not mean it will be accepted as legal by the courts. In fact, the courts have seemingly already made a decision on the issue.

[BJ_M]

new law being voted on today -- will end ALL dvd backups , fair use or not

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2148802,00.asp

Proposed Amendment Would Ban All DVD Copying

A proposed amendment to the current copy protection license governing DVDs would completely ban all DVD backups, and prevent DVD playback without the DVD disk being present inside the drive.

The proposed amendment was made public in a letter sent by Michael Malcolm, the chief executive of Kaleidescape, a DVD jukebox company which successfully defeated a suit by the DVD Copy Control Association (DVD CCA) this past March. The proposed amendment is scheduled for a vote on Wednesday, according to Malcolm.

A spokesman for the CCA said he was not aware of the proposed amendment, but added that he could not comment until the CCA had finished its deliberations. A spokeswoman for Kaleidescape said she understood that a final decision could take weeks, if not months.

The amendment is currently being considered by the Content Protection Advisory Council (CPAC) of the DVD CCA. If enacted, it would become binding in 18 months from the date on which the CCA notified its licensees, which include DVD hardware and software manufacturers.

The terms of the amendment, formally referred to as the "Unknown Specification Amendment," are just a paragraph long, and would basically eliminate DVD copying of any form, whether for the purposes of fair use or not.

The amendment reads:

"6.4. Certain Requirements for DVD Products. DVD Products, alone or in combination with other DVD Products, shall not be designed to descramble scrambled CSS Data when the DVD Disc containing such CSS Data and associated CSS Keys is not physically present in the DVD Player or DVD Drive (as applicable), and a DVD Product shall not be designed to make or direct the making of a persistent copy of CSS Data that has been descrambled from such DVD Disc by such DVD Product."

The amendment was proposed by Chris Cookson of Warner Bros., Ben Carr of Walt Disney Studios, Jeffrey Lawrence of Intel, Gabe Beged-Dov of Hewlett-Packard, David Harshman of Toshiba, and Andy Parsons of Pioneer Electronics, according to Malcolm as well as the attached letter proposing the amendment, and signed by the legal counsel representing the signatories.

To Malcolm, the proposed amendment was designed to put Kaleidescape out of business, and represented an unfair monopoly that should be broken up. The letter was addressed to several members of the Federal Trade Commission, key members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, Department of Justice staffers, EU regulatory bodies, and the chief executives of the companies the amendment signatories are employed by, as well as industry executives like Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer.

"The real purpose of this proposed amendment is to put Kaleidescape out of business by excluding the Kaleidescape System from the DVD playback devices authored by the CSS License Agreement," Malcolm wrote. "You should be aware before you vote on the proposed amendment that you expose yourself, your employer and the DVD CCA to serious and substantial antitrust liability if you vote for this amendment. Both state and federal laws outlaw anticompetitive conduct by businesses joining together to put a competitor out of business."

The DVD CCA has previously tried twice to add "managed copy" provisions to its licensing agreement, and both times the vote has failed, according to reports. Managed copies would either transfer the CSS key to the recordable DVD, which would require an additional CSS "replicator" license, or else use what is called "pre-keyed" media, which would include the CSS key already as part of the disc structure.

The proposed amendment would apparently add hardware restrictions to prevent DVD data from being descrambled and then copied. To date, that provision has been effectively enforced by litigation, which has effectively prevented mainstream software companies from copying or "backing up" DVD movies. A number of independent software developers, however, have published utilities or other applications for "ripping" DVD movies.

The proposed amendment would also prohibit software manufacturers to create "virtual drives," running a DVD image from a hard drive. The previous Kaleidescape case touched upon the company's use of ripping a DVD to a large internal hard drive, and playing back the movie on demand without the need for a physical disk to be inserted into the drive.

In the previous ruling settling the Kaleidescape-DVD CCA dispute, Judge Leslie C. Nichols of the Santa Clara Superior Court merely stated that the company had met its obligations to the CCA under its license agreement, without addressing the broader issue of fair use.

Editor's Note: This story has been updated at 4:20 PM PDT with comments from both the DVD CCA as well as Kaleidescape.

[BJ_M]

Note that This amendment is NOT an amendment to the law. It's an amendment to the license agreement between the association responsible for the DVD standard and the companies that create DVD products. As such, its only direct impact on the consumer is that DVD Backup products will have their licenses revoked. Which would make it that much more difficult to excercise our fair-use rights to make a backup of the media and/or space-shift the media.

I think that Kaleidescape is right to worry in this situation. The change to the license agreement appears to be a direct attack on their business. Which, if successful, would represent irreparable harm to the market at large. The convenience aspect of digitally ripping the media cannot be understated. With such devices on the market, consumers are able to place their physical copies in storage while still having easy access to their media. Most of us do it with our CDs without giving it a second thought. Why should our movies be any different? (I know that I can't be the only one who has shelf-space problems with CDs, DVDs, and Video Games.)

As a party being directly harmed by an artifcial monopoly, I certainly hope that Kaleidescape takes this to court should it be approved. Consumers have a right to use their bought and paid-for media as they like. The DVD standard shouldn't be used as a bludgeon to take that away. If Kaleidescape is unsuccessful in their suit, I would hope that a class-action suit could be initiated for the harm caused to consumers.

[MOVIEGEEK]

Wouldn't this conflict with recent rulings by the US Supreme Court regarding DMCA?
The "Content Protection Advisory Council" whoever they are can bite me.