No more pirated DVDs from China...maybe
The MPAA doesn't want to make it easy for you to copy DVDs; DVD Shrink does.
(Credit: Download.com)If you've been copying DVDs using some made-in-China DVD player, think about taking good care of the device, as you might not be able to buy a replacement.
The Motion Picture Association of America on Friday announced that its member companies have won a breach of contract lawsuit against China-based DVD player manufacturer Gowell Electronics Limited. The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California issued a permanent injunction that prohibits the manufacturer from violating any term of the Content Scramble System license agreement.
The lawsuit started in June of 2008 after an MPAA investigation revealed that Gowell was manufacturing and selling DVD players that lacked the appropriate implementation of the CSS license agreement.
CSS technology is a security measure that controls unauthorized access to and copying of copyrighted content on DVDs. The CSS license mandates the content protection that enables film studios to provide consumers with more than 84,000 DVD titles, including 12,000 new titles last year alone.
The motion picture studios are third-party beneficiaries of the CSS license and may enforce it against licensees who fail to comply with its terms.
While this is the ninth such case in which a court has issued a permanent injunction banning future violations of the license, this time the plaintiffs are allowed to review and test any new or re-engineered products that incorporate the CSS technology before going to market.
According to the MPAA, worldwide motion picture industry losses total more than $11 billion annually to hard goods piracy, including bootlegging and illegal copying. MPAA member companies have now won three injunctions against noncompliant DVD player manufacturers and six against companies in the IT area. They intend to continue pursuing other violators vigorously through future litigation.
Personally, I think it's interesting how MPAA counts the money it doesn't make as losses. I am not so sure if the Chinese company would comply 100 percent with the court order, either. And even if it does, I don't know what good that would do to general consumers, like you and me.
Dong Ngo is a CNET editor who covers networking and network storage, and writes about anything else he finds interesting. You can also listen to his podcast at insidecnetlabs.cnet.com. E-mail Dong. 
Thank you so much for your comment, Mr. MPAA official representative.
And why write this fear mongering post? This won't even stand a chance of stopping piracy so why scare people into thinking they'll never get a replacement box? If there was no such thing as a DVD player that would play pirated stuff I'd move to China and open up a company that sells DVD players that plays pirated stuff because I'd know there'd be a market for it. Don't worry people, it's just fear mongering going on here.
they have saved me money and so has bittorrent.
CSS has been a non factor with DVD pirates for more than 4 years. Studios know this. This is why they moved on to dumby sectors and structural changes. Almost to the point of a non playable DVD.
@Dong, next time please do some simply research before posting an article like this. I suggest going to DVDHelp or Doom9.
You could have saved a ton of space and just typed
The Motion Picture Association of America on Friday announced that its member companies have won a breach of contract lawsuit against China-based DVD player manufacturer Gowell Electronics Limited. The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California issued a permanent injunction that prohibits the manufacturer from violating any term of the Content Scramble System license agreement.
Jeez, know copies DVD via DVDplayer/Recorder
WAIT, you must still own 2 VCRs and can't get around the Mocrovision proble :)
1. Early DVDs and players didn't have working copy protection, similar to the earlier LaserDisc and VCD formats beforehand. Also, many early adopters of DVD bought DVD-ROM drives for their Windows 95 or 98 PCs and were able to record the video-out mirror image of the movie onto tape very easily.
2. If a person had a PC or Mac with a TV capture card, they could plug the DVD player into that and record the movie at 320 x 240 @ 256 colors @ 15 fps into an *.avi for *.mov file. True, it wouldn't be as nice as a DVD, but the point is they have the movie after that point.
3. Hackers and pirates smashed the DVD copy protection scheme back in 1999 with decrypters, and by 2000, programs like DVD X Copy were released.
4. Certain VCRs made by Japanese companies from 1993 till 1996 ignored Macrovision copy protection on tapes. Also, these same VCRs ignore DVD copy protection as well. It's all about the TBC inside the VCR. Some of these were made by Go Video, though if you had a Go Video VCR-DVD combo player, it had the chip inside that protected the DVD side from dubbing.
5. The MPAA wins one court case against a Chinese company that makes the players under a variety of different names for a whole bunch of companies. And so what? It's a Chinese company, not an American, let alone Californian, company. They won't comply, and there's nothing the MPAA can do about it. Nothing.
6. What about companies like Shinco, DVA, and etc. from China, Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Phillipines? These folks have DVD players that play anything, record anything, so forth and so on. These players can convert PAL to NTSC and NTSC to PAL on the fly! They also make disc replicators that copies anything to anything, sans Dreamcast, GameCube, and Wii discs (and LaserDisc, but that's for a physical reason).
7. And then, what about legit programs, like Toast, Media Creator, and such that also allows copying if the content was decryted?
Yes, the MPAA is behind the times. I can use an Apple TV to copy the movies, or just load it onto an iPod Video and use the video-out cable. It's not that hard. But I don't have the time to do any of this. Two hours for a movie to record for somebody else is two hours too long, as I've better things to do.
Nobody's saying they shouldn't make money off of their content, but their content hasn't been worthy, in my opinion, since 1994! I believe what Ben Franklin originally chartered for a copyright: 14 years at first, renewed once for another 14, then it enters the public domain to become part of the culture.
If by "interesting" you mean "fraudulent", then I agree.
- by EFFred November 3, 2008 9:55 AM PST
- This story could use some clarification. What was the manufacturer sued for producing? A DVD player, or a DVD recorder? If the former, then the lawsuit likely had nothing to do with DVD copying, and everything to do with the manufacturer failing to make the player "robust" against user modifications (usually to evade region coding).
- Reply to this comment
-
(18 Comments)AFAIK, most of the MPAA lawsuits against DVD hardware player makers (as contrasted with DVD software players) have nothing to do with DVD copying.
-Fred von Lohmann, EFF Staff Attorney