Toms Hardware relates that Sony will be using content controls for Blu-ray discs that will include a system allowing them to disable your player. The AACS system requires that you will have a permanent Internet connection, broadband usually, to their servers. If an illegal disk is detected then a hara-kiri command is sent to the player which then ritually disembowels itself with a secret code.
To me that sounds like a case of criminal damage by the rights owners: detecting an illegal disk may entitle you to refuse to play it but it does not entitle you to damage my player. It falls with my reading of the definition of criminal damage. Criminal damage, in English law, doesn’t even require physical damage, just that the item should become impaired. Putting an easily removable sticker on something could be criminal damage.
If I have to take my HD player to a repair shop to be reset that would certainly be criminal damage. Even if if all it took was to log onto some MPAA website answer some questions apologise humbly and get a reset code that would still be criminal damage. Indeed it might even provide a defence to reverse engineering and bypassing the DRM code that disables the player. I would argue that it would override the anti-circumvention provisions of the EUCD so long as all that it done is bypassing just the disabling code.
Frankly, if someone does that to my HD player they are going to wind up talking to 12 citizens.
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