The first lawsuit pitted an entertainment industry trade group against Kaleidescape's home video jukebox system, which copies conventional DVDs onto hard drives.
On Tuesday morning, Kaleidescape announced an upgrade that can copy high-definition Blu-ray discs as well. The move seems like a, well, aggressive reading of the license agreement that manufacturers of Blu-ray players must sign. But the company is also making a concession to Hollywood that seems to defeat the purpose of its products.
Based in Sunnyvale, Kaleidescape makes home media servers for people who have so much disposable income, they're willing to spend as much on a movie storage system as they might on a Mini Cooper. Its original product, which cost about $27,000, did for DVD collectors what iTunes did for CD owners: it liberated their movies from their plastic confines...
... enabling them to be watched and managed in a better way than the discs allowed. The benefits include being able to play movies without having to wade through the previews and multiple anti-piracy warnings, as well as being able to view them on any TV around the house (provided that the TVs are all connected to Kaleidescape players, which are not cheap).
The system boasted military-grade security, but it still drew a breach-of-contract lawsuit from a licensing body called the DVD Copy Control Assn. a group representing the studios, consumer electronics companies and high-tech firms. According to the DVD CCA, the license governing DVD technology doesn't forbid copying, but it does bar movies from being played without the DVD being present in the player. Kaleidescape won in California Superior Court, but last August the DVD CCA prevailed on appeal, sending the case back to Superior Court for another round.
