[Infowarrior] - DVD consortium loses court case over DVD copying

[Richard Forno]

DVD consortium loses court case over DVD copying

By Eric Bangeman | Published: March 29, 2007 - 08:08PM CT
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070329-dvd-consortium-loses-court-cas
e-over-dvd-copying.html

A California judge handed a victory to Kaleidescape, which manufactures home
media servers, ruling that the company's products do not violate the DVD
industry's CSS license. The company was sued by the DVD Copy Control
Association, which said that Kaleidescape's media servers violate its
standard licensing contract.

The Kaleidescape System is a kind of home media server on steroids. Starting
at $10,000, it consists of a server, movie player, and music player. The
server is designed to store all of the owner's movies and music, ripping
them from their original source discs for playback at a later time. To no
one's surprise, the DVD CCA took issue with that functionality, accusing
Kaleidescape of opening the door to massive copyright infringement and
arguing that any device that played movies from a DVD needed to have
physical access to the disc in order to do so.

After a week-long trial, Judge Leslie C. Nichols ruled in Kaleidescape's
favor, saying that the 20-page CSS spec was not technically included as part
of the license agreement. As a result, the company is in full compliance
with the DVD CCA's CSS license, noting in his decision that Kaleidescape had
made "good faith efforts" to ensure that its products were fully compliant.

"Kaleidescape has been operating in the shadow of the DVD CCA's allegations
for over three years," Michael Malcolm, CEO of Kaleidescape told Ars
Technica. "We are gratified that after hearing all of the evidence, the
Judge has completely vindicated our position."

The complexity of the DVD CCA's licensing agreement proved to be its
downfall. Witnesses during the trial characterized the license drafting
process as having been carried out over a series of 100+ meetings by a group
of entertainment-industry lawyers with feedback from engineers. The result
was a confusing standard licensing contract, one that omitted key details
about the CSS General Specification.

Unfortunately for consumers, the decision is a narrow one. It looks to be
applicable only to commercial home media server products that store single
copies of a DVD in a copy-protected form for personal use. Kaleidescape's
rips remain CSS protected on the hard drive, and Malcolm tells Ars that some
parts have an "extra layer of AES-256 encryption." So those who wish to rip
their own DVD libraries for personal use will continue to operate in the
murky, grey intersection of the DMCA and fair use.

Although no formal appeal has been filed, it is likely that the DVD CCA will
ask a higher court to overturn the decision.