Recordable-CD Pioneer Taiyo Yuden Among 12 Firms Withdrawing From DVD CCA, Says DOJ Notice
In another especially strong sign of physical media's demise, Japan's Taiyo Yuden, which teamed with Philips and Sony in the 1980s to help pioneer commercialization of recordable CDs, was among a dozen companies to withdraw recently from the DVD Copy…
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Control Association (CCA), the group told the FTC and Attorney General Loretta Lynch in Aug. 21 written notifications. So said a notice published in Monday’s Federal Register by the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. Taiyo Yuden, in a June 11 announcement, said it would terminate sales of recordable optical discs by Dec. 31, citing “diminishing” market conditions for physical media amid the growing storage capacity of hard drives and the increasing use of cloud computing. According to the DOJ notice, besides Taiyo Yuden, the companies that withdrew recently from the DVD CCA include: Centurion Corp. and Eastern Asia Technology, both of Singapore; ETV Interactive of the U.K.; Guangdong Coagent Electronics S&T and Shenzhen Autone-Tronic Technology, both of China; Hyundai Media of South Korea; JRC and Kyoei Sangyo, both of Japan; Moser Baer India of India; Optical Experts Manufacturing of Charlotte, North Carolina; and Yusan Industries of Hong Kong. Three companies did sign on as new DVD CCA members through Aug. 21, including Dongguan Digital AV Technology of China, and Socionext and Taiwan Sanshin Electronics, both of Japan, the notice said. The DVD CCA runs licensing and administration of the DVD format’s Content Scrambling System copy protection platform. The change-of-membership notifications to the FTC and DOJ were required to extend antitrust protections to DVD CCA members under the National Cooperative Research and Production Act of 1993, the notice said.