Earlier this year, we reported that the DVD CCA had lost their court case against Kaleidescape. According to PC World, the
group has responded by proposing a new amendment to the CSS licensing agreement. If approved, the amendment would make all DVD backups
illegal.
The amendment is currently being considered by the Content Protection Advisory Council (CPAC) of the DVD CCA. If
enacted, it would become binding in 18 months from the date on which the CCA notified its licensees, which include DVD hardware and
software manufacturers.
The terms of the amendment, formally referred to as the "Unknown Specification Amendment," are just a
paragraph long, and would basically eliminate DVD copying of any form, whether for the purposes of fair use or not.
The amendment
reads:
"6.4. Certain Requirements for DVD Products. DVD Products, alone or in combination with other DVD Products, shall not be
designed to descramble scrambled CSS Data when the DVD Disc containing such CSS Data and associated CSS Keys is not physically present in
the DVD Player or DVD Drive (as applicable), and a DVD Product shall not be designed to make or direct the making of a persistent copy of
CSS Data that has been descrambled from such DVD Disc by such DVD Product."
The DVD CCA needs to realize that CSS is
worthless as a form of DRM. Amendments like this will do little to prevent consumers from making backups and will only put companies like
Kaleidescape out of business. Then again, that might be the whole point of this amendment. If you'd like to read more, the entire
article can be found here.
