Last time, we were talking that consumers might get the right to make several legal copies of DVD and Blu-ray Disc movies. Now, we are nearing the day when DVD copying will totally become illegal. This won’t just include copying from disk-to-disk but ripping a movie onto your Media Center PC to watch it anytime also falls under the same category. That simply means that if you are watching a movie by any means other than playing a DVD on a player, it will be considered illegal.
A proposed amendment, if accepted, would finally ban all DVD backups and prevent DVD playback without the DVD disk being physically there in the drive. This anticipated amendment was stated in a letter sent by Michael Malcolm, the chief executive of Kaleidescape, a DVD jukebox company. Voting will take place on Wednesday. But, DVD Copy Control Association (DVD CCA) denied having any idea of the proposed amendment.
The proposed amendment says:
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.
This amendment would supposedly enforce hardware limitations to thwart the descrambling and copying of DVD data. Moreover, it won’t allow the software manufacturers to create virtual drives and run a DVD image from a hard drive.
The amendment has been proposed by Chris Cookson of Warner Bros., Ben Carr of Walt Disney Studios, Jeffrey Lawrence of Intel, Gabe Beged-Dov of Hewlett-Packard, David Harshman of Toshiba, and Andy Parsons of Pioneer Electronics.
But, what if I buy a movie and burn a copy of it to keep in my CD case for future use? If my original DVD gets scratched and I watch the movie on the back-up copy, the new amendment will call me a “PIRATE”. Am I?
Via: PCMag
