MPAA: Court rules against Chinese DVD player manufacturer

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has announced that once again a court has ruled against a DVD player manufacturer for violations of the Content Scrambling System (CSS) agreement. The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California ruled that the plaintiffs are allowed to review and test any new or re-engineered product incorporating the copy protection technology before it can make it to market.

The court issues a permanent injunction banning Gowell Electronics Ltd. from violating the CSS license agreement. It is the result of lawsuit brought against the company in June by the MPAA alleging breach of contract and it is the ninth case in which a court has sided with the MPAA members in preventing future violations of the CSS license.

The MPAA estimates that it loses $11 billion per year from the sale of pirated goods and illegal copying. CSS is a (weak) prevention against copying that was beaten a decade ago and is present on pretty much all retail DVDs on the market.

Written by: James Delahunty @ 3 Nov 2008 19:57

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7 comments

DXR88

This is how they get there money folks, one pathetic lawsuit after another.

what agreement was violated,to begin with?

4.11.2008 10:14 #1

pirkster

Originally posted by DXR88: This is how they get there money folks, one pathetic lawsuit after another.

what agreement was violated,to begin with?Really?

Care to point out how much money they made on this case?

It is implied (though not explicitly stated by the vaguely worded article) that Gowell Electronics violated the CSS license agreement by not allowing their product(s) that contain CSS technology to be reviewed and tested prior to being brought to market.

4.11.2008 10:43 #2

Leningrad

Originally posted by DXR88: This is how they get there money folks, one pathetic lawsuit after another.

what agreement was violated,to begin with?License agreement i suppose

4.11.2008 19:01 #3

Fiji5555

.......The MPAA estimates that it loses $11 billion per year from the sale of pirated goods and illegal copying.........

ermmmmmmmm NO, if I can't download it then I wasn't going to buy it in the first place. They don't seem to get that into their heads. So if I wasn't going to buy a certain movie, no money was lost and if I decided to download the movie then again no money was lost.

4.11.2008 19:33 #4

Leningrad

@Fiji

I agree, the only way you can determine whether a corporation lost money because of piracy is if you can actually know for certain if the person's conscience is actually deciding between downloading it or not.The Mppa is simply trying to influence the courts with their superficial estimates.

4.11.2008 19:41 #5

Ruddy

I should sue them for all the crap movies I did buy.

5.11.2008 09:06 #6

varnull

I would love to see one of these "estimates" actually tried on court where only hard facts can be taken as evidence..

"estimate" = guess.. supposition based on hearsay or unproven analysts figures that the people relying on the "estimate" have paid to have generated.

They lose 11 billion??.. lets see them actually PROVE that they lost a brass farthing. I wonder how many people would not take their families to the cinema to see a movie they hadn't already downloaded as a cam to check it out for suitability and value. If the worlds "pirates" all had a month off the MPAA would probably be whining about the 60% fall in cinema attendance.. and still blaming piracy.

Until I started downloading cams I hadn't been to the cinema in over 20 years.. (the spy who loved me).. since the cam I have been and seen The Day After Tomorrow, Indiana Jones, The Simpsons and Casino Royale.. theres 4 ticket sales they would not have had otherwise. Now just how is "piracy" hurting them??

Free open source software = made by end users who want an application to work. The flower of carnage-shura no hana..

5.11.2008 09:23 #7

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