Digital Home Thoughts: Proposed Amendment Would Ban All DVD Copying

"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. The proposed amendment was made public in a letter sent by Michael Malcolm, the chief executive of Kaleidescape, a DVD jukebox company which successfully defeated a suit by the DVD Copy Control Association (DVD CCA) this past March. The proposed amendment is scheduled for a vote on Wednesday, according to Malcolm. A spokesman for the CCA said he was not aware of the proposed amendment, but added that he could not comment until the CCA had finished its deliberations. A spokeswoman for Kaleidescape said she understood that a final decision could take weeks, if not months."

The terms of the amendment, formally referred to as the "Unknown Specification Amendment," are just a paragraph long, and would basically eliminate DVD copying of any form, whether for the purposes of fair use or not. But it seems to me that the small paragraph that is the ammendment is so incredibly vague. It seems to be quite broad in its applications and impact. I feel that there is just no way that this kind of ammendment can/should pass. I am not entirely sure as to what percentage of DVD users play DVD content without the actual DVD (i.e. illegally), however I am pretty sure that a number of people use them for backup purposes. I fear that if this passes, it will make the end of the DVD. If only this article had not published the people supporting this ammendment, I would have thought that it is a conspiracy by the HDDVD/Blu-Ray manufacturers to bring about this kind of change. :-)