Ok sports fans, follow along with me on this one. It is as complex as a Dashiell Hammett novel and almost as engaging.
It seems that there is a company in California, Kaleidescape Inc. that sells very high-end servers ($10,000 and up) for home use. These servers rip and back up hundreds of DVD and CD music and movie files on hard disks and send the digital files over a wired Ethernet network throughout the home. The system uses CSS and AES encryption and the servers link to TVs over HDMI connections that have all the required copy protection. Importantly, there is no access to the content from a PC or the Internet. In other words, it is an expensive toy to allow people to access their DVD or music collection through their own server and, thereby, to their own TVs and musical equipment.
We all want one, right? So, of course they are being sued. The DVD Copy Control Association claims that the company’s home servers violate CSS protection designed to stop DVDs from being copied. Of course they say it has nothing to do with the fair use doctrine, it is just contract law. Maybe so, but the underlying issues and eventual decision will impact heavily on what users are allowed to do with their own property. And, as the owner of the company says concerning the copying issue, if you can afford $10,000 for a DVD player, you can certainly afford $10 for the DVDs. Trial should last two weeks.
