Sony gets sued again (and again, and again)
Poor Sony. They can’t seem to go a week these days without some form of massive litigation against them. The Sony "lawsuit of the hour" comes to us courtesy of Canadian company Certicom. The Canuck corporation is alleging that Sony’s AACS encryption process infringes on Certicom’s patented elliptical curve cryptography (ECC). I will confess to have no idea what the heck that means. What I do know, however, is that if successful this suit will require Sony to pay a commission to Certicom for every Blu-ray equipped device that they sell. Price increases like this usually get passed on to the consumer, but could the public really stomach a PS3 price increase? Nope. It would be the system’s swan song. Hopefully this amounts to nothing more than legal gobbledygoop, but with poor old Sony, you never do know.
Sony, Sony, Sony. . . Tisk, Tisk, Tisk. . . I wonder what is next. . .
Just like the Sony Beta format lost to VHS. These lawsuits may see Blu-Ray go the same way.
First JJLO there really isn’t a parallel between beta/vhs and AACS issues. Both BD and HDDVD use AACS and more formats on the way will use it too.
AACS(LA)isn’t just Sony’s problem… There are several founding partners involved on AACS including Sony, Intel, Microsoft, Panasonic, Disney, IBM and Toshiba. So if these people are suing Sony the others cannot be far behind.
Why is this news? Every ten seconds some arbitrary small company sues a big corporation in the hope of a big payday. In the case of Blu-ray why are they only suing Sony? AACS is used (and is broken already IIRC)in all HD-DVD and all Blu-ray players. Why not sue Microsoft or Intel or Toshiba or Matsushita? US tort laws allow for malicious legal attack that benefits the lawyers more than anyone else.
Interestingly, Sony can abandon AACS if required as Blu-ray has another level of copy protection (BD+). The HD-DVD camp cannot. I wonder if the lawyers thought of that…
Im a hardcore HDDVD supporter, I personally dont like blu-ray and yes, I have used them both with the same setup. The quality between the two is debateable depending on the setup of your own personal system. I just havent ever been too crazy about Sony, from beta max to blu-ray they always charge too much. And yes im aware of the fact that blu-ray is better for storage and etc… but I would personally like to see this format war over with HDDVD the winner….Whats your favorite format everyone just out of curiousity??
P.S Wouldnt it be nice to have ALL the HD movies be on one format not limited by which side of the format war you are on?
Rob the point I was trying to get across is that the market will eventually determine the popular format. Beta was a better format than VHS but VHS became the standard. When it was out OS/2 was a better operating system than windows but windows became the standard. At some point it will be either Blu-ray or HDDVD the market will make that determination. You are correct Blu-ray and HDDVD share AACS. If you pull back the covers on any competing technologies there will always be similarities or share technologies. At the end of the day the market will decide.
This one’s different. Firstly, they have products that implement their patents – so they’re not your typical lawyer-only company. And secondly, I think a bunch of Ph.D’s working for 20 years must have produced something valuable. FWIW, Bruce Schneier seems to be of the same opinion.
surely now they must be getting fed up of nicking peoples ideas and not pay for them, why people continue to believe in sony is mindboggling…and yes hd dvd for the win, i have about 14 hd dvd titles and they are great, looking at the blu ray offerings and to be honest its quite underwhelming considering they have more studios….hd dvd all the way