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Information Technology

Samsung sued over encryption-ignoring DVD drive

By Justin Mann, TechSpot.com
Published: February 20, 2006, 7:03 PM EST
Samsung has found themselves in a bit of hot water, with a lawsuit against them filed by some big players like Fox, Paramount, Time Warner, Universal and Disney. The reason? A particular model of Samsung DVD ROM, the DVD-HD841, can apparently be used to circumvent encryption technology used to prevent unauthorized duplication. That model of drive, however, hasn't been available for a year and a half. Samsung is as of yet undecided as to how they will handle this issue.

``In fact, we do not exactly know the contents of the lawsuit and the intention of the plaintiffs. We have yet to receive the complaint,’’ a Samsung spokesman said.
Encryption circumvention isn't exactly new, and it happens every day. Will targeting a single product produced by one company over a year ago have any real effect on the state of the market today? Probably not, but it could have future impliciations for companies producing enthusiast hardware such as HD-DVD and BluRay burners

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User Comments (6)

Post a comment
DragonMaster
on February 20, 2006
8:27 PM
The prices will go sky high on eBay I suppose...

Samsung is as of yet undecided as to how they will handle this issue.

They will recall it? (I'm not sure that people will do that...)

crossfire851
on February 20, 2006
9:38 PM
They will make some claim that it's defective and it needs to be recalled and can be exchanged for a newer model.

mentaljedi
on February 21, 2006
6:29 AM
Originally posted by crossfire851:
They will make some claim that it's defective and it needs to be recalled and can be exchanged for a newer model.


Well... not everyone's going to fall for that.

Cartz
on February 21, 2006
10:19 AM
***User unable to post as he is current scouring ebay***

or not... but hey, I'm assuming this could be used to circumvent HDCP, if it could, it would pair nicely with my non-HDCP 2405wfp.

DragonMaster
on February 21, 2006
3:10 PM

Well... not everyone's going to fall for that.


Well, only the ones that know what it can do.

fiziks
on February 21, 2006
3:21 PM
a better way to prevent the illegal duplications done on this model would have been to not tell anybody about it... but i suppose any money from the lawsuit could cover inevitable losses

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