Kaleidescape loses court case and sees permanent injunction granted against the sale of the media servers, which "rip" DVDs and Blu-rays into digital format for streaming at home
Kaleidescape, the company that produces innovative DVD/Blu-ray servers, is now barred from selling their servers after the DVD Copy Control Association (DVD CCA) won its case against the company.
A California Superior Court has granted a permanent injunction against Kaleidescape from selling their media servers, after it found that the DVD CCA's licensing agreement was breached.
Kaleidescape has already filed an appeal against the ruling, and has accused the DVD CCA of anti-competitive behaviour in trying to "level the playing field" for the "large consumer electronics companies" and "big computer companies" that sits on the board of the DVD CCA.
"Imagine a world where Apple wasn't allowed to build the iPod because Sony wanted a 'level playing field' for the Walkman," said Kaleidescape CEO Michael Malcolm.
Kaleidescape's media servers is that they allow physical DVD and Blu-ray discs to be "ripped" into a digital format, and streamed from media servers to your TV via your home network. The lawsuit arrived because the process required DVD's copy protection scheme, CSS, to be removed. The DVD CCA says this violates the terms of their licensing agreement, but Kaleidescape says that they still comply with the "spirit" of the agreement, by keeping the path between the decrypted content, and the playback device, encrypted. A normal DVD player would also carry out the CSS decryption, and then output the content with some added layer of encryption, including HDCP for HDMI output.
The difference however is that Kaleidescape servers store the CSS-less movie in digital format, while DVD players do not persistently store the decrypted digital form of the movie. To quell fears of rentals being "ripped" and stored permanently, Kaleidescape even developed a system that would prevent rented discs from being copied, as well as prevented "ripped" content from being accessed and uploaded. But these measures failed to assure the DVD CCA, despite Kaleidescape providing evidence that the average Kaleidescape customer is far from being movie pirates, but are actually avid movie buyers, averaging more than 500 movies on DVD and Blu-ray.
The latest appeal filed, this time by Kaleidascape, with the California Courts of Appeal in Santa Clara could take up to two years to be processed.
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