It's Illegal Not To Include Copy Protection In DVD Players?
from the but-why? dept
Thanks to John for passing on this story that Samsung is facing a lawsuit from a number of movie studios, though over what is still a bit up in the air. Samsung believes it's about a DVD player they stopped making and shipping over a year ago. The movie studios are upset that people could use the DVD player to avoid DVD copy protection, but it's not entirely clear (1) why that's illegal and (2) why the studios are suddenly interested in this so long after the product has been removed from the market.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Streisand Effect and eBay...
I would just love to see these Samsung DVD-HD841 players start going for $500 each on eBay.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
New copy protection coming
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No Subject Given
Be thankful that we have DVD and not that crappy DIVX license-driven format to deal with.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Background
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
DVD Players in Asia
DiVX is great. Great quality and the size that lets you burn 4 four feature movies on a standard DVD. Nice!
China has made a big industry copying content from Hollywood. I think we are in this cat and mouse game for a long time.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: DVD Players in Asia
The other Divx is an encoding standard created a few years ago that, as is mentioned, allows you to store high quality video in a compressed format that allows 4 times more video per disk.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: DVD Players in Asia
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Breach of contract/license
That would make this a breach of contract, not a violation of law.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Breach of contract/license
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No Subject Given
Possibly the studios feel that the DVD player in question represents such a threat that they must stomp on it quickly with a civil case before finally killing it with a criminal case. However, I wonder why they want to spend the money on a private suit against a product that is already supposed to be off the market. This seems like anything but a clear-cut DMCA case.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
...
solution: we start killing lawyers in front of their families.
lawyers need to be put in their place in this society, that place being UNDER the piece of shit stuck to my shoe. they're thoroughly worthless and evil people.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: ...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: ...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: ...
Like the kind who watched, and enjoyed Brokeback Mountian?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No Subject Given
Sure that's still a flawed argument, but I didn't think DRM was mandatory... yet.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]