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When DVD Is Too Good to Be Legal

http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,37059,00.html

by Leander Kahney

3:00 a.m. Jun. 19, 2000 PDT

To Hollywood's alarm, a British company is selling modified DVD players that output pure digital signals.

Unlike regular DVD players, which provide ho-hum quality analog pictures, Function Communications' modified DVD players output a stream of pure digital video.

[...]

Garrett said that while many Hollywood producers can't wait to get their disks into one of the modified players, most have misgivings about seeing the players on the market.

On the one hand, it allows their movies to be shown at the highest possible quality, but producers are also afraid digital outputs will lead to a loss of control, Garrett said.

DVD manufacturers license the DVD format from the DVD Copy Control Association. Its contract prohibit makers from including digital outputs -- specifically a FireWire port -- in their players for fear it will allow consumers to make digital copies.

Garrett said he studied the paperwork and concluded that while it isn't illegal to make a chipset providing digital outputs, add them to DVD players, or sell the modified machine, it appears to be illegal to use the modified player to play a movie.

"If you read the fine points of the law, anyone who plays a (DVD movie) with a digital output is breaking the law," he said. "But if you're just watching it, how are you breaking the law?"

Garrett said he received "dozens" of cease-and-desist letters from Hollywood lawyers when the modified players first appeared on the market in the U.K last month.

But since then, the legal threats have come to a halt.

Garrett thinks it's because there is little danger of legions of teenagers copying the latest DVDs and posting them on the Internet.

[...]

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