The DVD Copy Control Association, the group that owns the copy-protection technology contained on DVDs, said a company called Kaleidescape is offering products that illegally make copies of DVDs. The company, which has won several recent consumer electronics awards, said it has worked closely with the DVD CCA for more than a year, and will fight the suit, filed Tuesday.
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Kaleidescape creates expensive consumer electronics networks that upload the full contents of as many as 500 DVDs to a home server, and allow the owner to browse through the movies without later using the DVDs themselves. That's exactly what the copy-protection technology on DVDs, called Content Scramble System (CSS) was meant to prevent, the Hollywood-backed group said.
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"The express intent and purpose of the contract and CSS are to prevent copying of copyrighted materials such as DVD motion pictures," Bill Coats, a DVD CCA attorney, said in a statement. "While Kaleidescape obtained a license to use CSS, the company has built a system to do precisely what the license and CSS are designed to prevent--the wholesale copying of protected DVDs."