Kaleidescape Exhorts DVD CCA to Keep Rules for Home Servers
DVD’s content-protection leaders seem to be in for a fight when that body convenes tomorrow (Wednesday, June 20) to rewrite rules on what home networking servers can and can’t do about distributing movies through home networks. Kaleidescape, a high-end supplier of such servers, served notice Friday to the DVD Copy Control Association that it will sue the consortium of studios, CE makers and PC makers for anti-trust if it approves an amendment to its licensing agreement that essentially will “put Kaleidescape out of business.”
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At issue is the $10,000 Kaleidescape system’s ability to “rip” DVDs to its server’s hard drive, for selectable playback through different display on a home’s network. “Ripped” discs keep their original Content Scrambling System copy protection, Kaleidescape claimed. And they are protected more heavily, with a high-level U.S. government encryption scheme preventing the movies from being copied in any way or punted to file-sharing sites on the Internet.
The Kaleidescape system’s convenience means physical DVDs need not be present in its server once copied to the hard drive. The DVD CCA insists a physical disc must be present in a player -- but it lost on that count in a March ruling by a Federal Court in California, which said DVD CCA’s license was vague on the point, and Kaleidescape didn’t infringe.
DVD CCA’s proposed revision would plug the dike in its leaky earlier licensing agreement. That only told licensees about the prohibition after the fact, Kaleidescape said Monday. It claimed the proposed revision would put it and other companies out of business after they'd agreed to the original licensing agreement.
Comment on the leaked document wasn’t available from either entity at our deadline. Lawyers we consulted said Kaleidescape’s warning was a brilliant legal maneuver to give DVD CCA’s many members pause on a vote -- including suit-wary Japanese companies -- but said they doubted there were grounds for an anti-trust case.