Comments on: No more pirated DVDs from China...maybe

DVD-player manufacturer in China ordered to comply with content protection technology license.

[sharmajunior]

I am so happy that they have finally taken this step. I am just tired of these poor quality, non-working dvd players and dvd's that are available at many locations. Sometimes I wonder how they even make this crappy stuff. Finally MPAA has stepped up to preserve quality.

[cidman2001]

Those crappy dvd players are great for the money. I buy them for my kids. They'll play any disc you throw at them. My expensive dvd player won't play hardly any burned discs, but the $39 player from Walmart rocks. For the money, I could buy 10 of them!

What the MPAA is doing has nothing to do with the quality of the dvd players.

[LunaticSX]

@sharmajunior

Thank you so much for your comment, Mr. MPAA official representative.

[Magicland]

So what does this have to do with anything? Bootleg DVD's won't have CSS anyway, so what does it matter if the DVD player implements it or not? Folks don't copy DVD's from DVD players, they rent them from Netflix and burn them on their computers. This measure does absolutely nothing.

[aka_tripleB]

Finally they are going after the big criminals instead of the few college students that they falsely labelled as the biggest copyright criminals. But I would like to know how the MPAA plans to truly enforce a US ruling in a country halfway around the world. This is likely too late for anyone to take this seriously, not after all that has been said and done on behalf of the MPAA.

[sanenazok]

Enforcement will be through an import ban. Do you think this Chinese maker sells in China. Hell why would they have an English name. Instead it would be called "Chinese Characters" DVD "some more Chinese Characters"!

[Imalittleteapot]

Uhh, That's nice. You do realize the reason I rip all my DVDs to my machine and use VLC to play them is so I don't have to use a DVD player at all right? Seriously, my comp is my stereo, DVD player, TV, Internet box, TIVO. Come on. I don't even understand people that have more than one device. You're all friggin living in the past! Who needs a DVD player?

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.

[manualfunky]

i wouldn't pay for the majority of the tripe that i have been unfortunate enough to view thanks to pirates...

they have saved me money and so has bittorrent.

[contentcreator--2008]

Just another punk thief in the night. Either pay, or don't watch. You don't get to set the terms, you're just walking into a store, saying "that costs too much", grabbing it, and running.

[ywkhgqo]

with a name like content creater, it's pretty obvious where your bias comes from

[manualfunky]

yes but you dont know that i also go to theaters to watch the good movies i do downlaod.... at least with piracy, i can choose what i want to pay for rather than spending the cash and hating the content. you're allowed to listen to music in music stores, why dont they show you the movie before you decide to pay for it?

[Magicland]

Wrong, contentcreator, we DO get to set the terms. Unfortunately dinosaurs like the MPAA haven't figured that out yet. By the time they do, they'll be extinct, and good riddance.

[itworker--2008]

I don't understand the big screenshot of DVDShrink in the article. DVDShrink is a Transcoder and has nothing to do with the content of this article MPAA shuts down Chinese company that bypasses CSS.

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 :)

[BtmnHatesRbn]

Leo Laporte is always talking about Handbrake, Mac-the-Ripper, AnyDVD, and CloneDVD. Seriously, DVD copy protection was smashed to pieces back in the 1990s.

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.

[BtmnHatesRbn]

Oh, and 8. A handful of new DVDs didn't even have copy protection enabled. I rented Incredible Hulk from RedBox and didn't relize I was playing it in a pass-through my VCR. Usually I get the Macrovision dimming of the screen, but this movie didn't do that. Mistake? Or a new trend like how VHS stopped being copy protected in 1997. Since Blu-Ray is out, does Hollywood want to fore-go copy protection on DVDs? Who really knows.

[benjwah]

"Personally, I think it's interesting how MPAA counts the money it doesn't make as losses."
If by "interesting" you mean "fraudulent", then I agree.

[EFFred]

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).

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