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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