Hollywood Kills More Innovation; Judge Overturns DVD Jukebox Ruling
from the *sigh* dept
Well, there goes that one. Just a few hours ago, we were writing about how Judge Patel's district court ruling barring Real Networks RealDVD system seemed to conflict with a California state court ruling for Kaleidescape. It's true that there were some differences in the details behind the ruling, but it might not matter either way, as a state appeals court has reversed the lower court ruling and has basically said that Kaleidescape's DVD backup system likely violates the DRM found on DVDs.Once again, we're seeing a fearful Hollywood, unwilling to innovate itself, using the courts and the law to stomp out anyone who innovates. The Kaleidescape product is clearly not for "piracy" purposes. It's a server that costs around $10,000, and is designed for high-end movie fans, who want to store all of their legally purchased movies on a server so they can watch it. It didn't serve any sort of "piracy" purpose whatsoever. But, thanks to Hollywood freaking out over the fact that anyone might make a copy of a movie, even for perfectly legal backup purposes, that device may now be dead.
Time and time again, we hear folks in the entertainment industry insist that they want to support technological innovation, but their actions show otherwise. They tried (and failed) to outlaw the VCR. They tried (and failed) to outlaw the MP3 player. But lately they've been succeeding in outlawing products just because they don't like them. Doesn't that seem like a massive problem?
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Filed Under: copying, dvd
Companies: kaleidescape
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Re:
I think Mike speaks for a lot of us here in the real world. And guess what: there's no room here for those who are
-afraid- (as in afraid that they'll no longer be swimming in cold, hard cash) of changing. No matter how many pointless, unrealistic anti-consumer laws are lobbied into existence in the name of "deserved compensation", no matter how many essentially innocent folks these "content creators" (largely the ones who make the money, not the ones who create the content) unwisely opt to file suit against, the market-- not the courts-- will speak its true mind in the end. People certainly deserve to be compensated for their work, but the consumer of the goods they produce has the right to spend their money in any such manner as they choose. Fair use is not a right, it is a law of physics.
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