More legal news today as EEtimes.com reports that the DVD industry has besides the dispute about the DVD recordable format also problems with deciding that copy protection to use with the next generation DVDs. Because their previous protection CSS was beaten with several lines of code, the industry had prosposed to develop a new stronger protection.
On 1th of August the DVD Copy Control Association (DVD CCA) should have announced a new protection, but the project failed. They developed several methods, but the organistation could not reach an agreement on what protection to use.
Sources in the computer and consumer electronics industries disputed the MPAA executive's claim, stating that talks had collapsed because none of the watermarking technology proposals proved viable after months of testing. |
Marlin Blizinsky, a lawyer working on the regulation and standards strategy program at Microsoft Corp., acknowledged that he voted "no" to the watermark proposal at the DVD CCA board meeting, but said his decision was based on a personal, independent analysis on the issue. "I was never told how to vote on this by my employer," he said.
Blizinsky said he was primarily concerned with two issues related to the watermark technology. "The first was how much it costs to put the technology into place, and [the second was] what it does to your machine."
For example, one of the watermarking proposals discussed by DVD CCA but not among the finalists that were considered, would have made Microsoft's X-Box gaming consoles incapable of playing DVDs, Blizinsky said. "We needed to balance the cost and benefits of the technology . . . and in my opinion, the balance between the two was significantly off."
The question is how long it will take for them to decide what protection to use and after that how long it will take to have the protection beaten.
Source: EEtimes.com
