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Judge chucks out DVD case

by on30 March 2007

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Startup allowed to sell DVD server



A Silicon Valley start up has won its battle against a powerful movie industry body to allow it to sell a server on the basis that it can store DVD movies on

hard-drives.

DVD Copy Control Association (DVD CCA) had demanded that  Kaleidescape stop marketing its servers that store movies in a hard-drive array on the basis that it infringed copyright.


Judge Leslie C. Nichols ruled against the in a civil suit saying that the basis for his decision was his ruling that an entire section of the DVD CCA's spec for the Content Scramble System (CSS) was not technically included as part of the license agreement.

 
He said that the CSS spec, which was designed by a committee of lawyers was confusing. He added that the 20-page document known as the CSS General Specification was not part of an overall group of 170 pages of technical specifications defining CSS.

 
This was crucial as the The DVD CCA relied on language in the general spec to assert any system playing DVD movies has to have the physical disk present.

Kaleidescape believed that the CSS agreement allowed the company to build a system that kept a single, protected copy of a DVD on a hard drive for private

use.

More here.


Last modified on 30 March 2007
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