Arrrrg...Ye Pirates Beware

Not that DVD pirates are acting legally now, I just thought that it was a catchy title. Digression aside, an article just published on PCMag.com says that a proposed amendment would ban ALL DVD copying. Mark Hachman writes that, "A proposed amendment to the current copy protection license governing DVDs would completely ban all DVD backups, and prevent DVD playback without the DVD disk being present inside the drive."

This new amendment called the "Unknown Specification Amendment" would be enforced on all DVD hardware and software manufacturers and would "eliminate DVD copying of any form, whether for the purposes of fair use or not."

This new amendment comes on the heels of a legal victory by Kaleidescape Systems, a DVD jukebox company that syndicates DVD programming and allows viewers to store the broadcast to a hard drive on their local system. Michael Malcolm, the CEO of Kaleidescape, feels that this new legislation is designed to put his company out of business based on his victory. Even though subscribers are paying for the DVD "image", the new legislation would make Kaleidescape's equipment non-compliant due to the fact that it would rip a DVD image to the hard drive and play it back without the need for the original DVD.