A panel of the DVD Copy Control Association (DVD CCA) is weighing a proposed amendment to the law governing copy protection that would ban all DVD backups, and prevent DVD playback without the DVD disk being present inside the drive.
The proposed amendment states: "DVD products, alone or in combination with other DVD products, shall not be designed to descramble scrambled CSS data when the DVD disc containing such CSS [Content Scrambling System] data and associated CSS keys is not physically present in the DVD player or DVD drive (as applicable), and a DVD product shall not be designed to make or direct the making of a persistent copy of CSS data that has been descrambled from such DVD disc by such DVD product."
The ban would prevent users to make a backup copy of a legally owned movie for later playback on a device without a DVD drive, such as a PSP or an iPod. What about fair use?
The amendment was proposed by representatives of two movie studios - Disney and Warner Brothers - as well as HP, Intel, Pioneer, and Toshiba and is scheduled for a vote on Wednesday, according to Michael Malcolm, chief executive of Kaleidescape, a company that manufactures video servers to copy DVDs legally for use in multi-room display systems, and which was found not guilty of infringing the existing CSS licensing terms this past March.