In another attempt to regulate every detail of what we do with content, the Content Protection Advisory Council is taking swift action to make certain that things we take for granted, like copying movies to a media server, or making a copy to let the kids have, so they don’t scratch up the original, become illegal.

This group [agency, gang,  congregation of thugs?] wants to make certain that the Fair Use policy dies. This is something that flies in the face of fair play. This would cause large amounts of money to be spent by companies to implement a new copy protection scheme. The protection would have to be partially in the discs, and partially in the hardware. Also, the availability of using ‘virtual drive’ software would be prohibited.

“The amendment was proposed by Chris Cookson of Warner Bros., Ben Carr of Walt Disney Studios, Jeffrey Lawrence of Intel, Gabe Beged-Dov of Hewlett-Packard, David Harshman of Toshiba, and Andy Parsons of Pioneer Electronics”

Guess who will get to fund the development and implementation.

The impetus for all this is greed, we all know, but more recently, a company called Kaleidescape won a court ruling that allows them to put video content on a media player without the discs being present. This was the first success defeating the Copy Control Association [who seem to subscribe to the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition], and boy, are they peeved.

This is known within the CPAC as the Unknown Specification Amendment, and could become law in as little as 18 months from the date of notification of licensees.

Since this affects DVDs, it is only a small slide down that slippery slope to include Compact Disc content. It should be railed against vociferously, to anyone in a position to make sure this amendment does not pass.

Tags: dmca, millennium copyright act, cpac, cca, dvd, copy protection