HP product fuels fears of movie piracy

The Hollywood hills are shaken...

Hewlett-Packard is to unveil a re-writeable DVD drive (Digital Versatile Disc), which will allow films to be copied. The process makes creating a DVD more straightforward. It will allow users to copy, play and distribute non-copyrighted movies for use on home DVD players. The imminent release of 'dvd100i' is sure to compound the fear of Hollywood studio bosses already suffering angst over the proliferation of film sharing through Napster-type services like Gnutella-based Limewire. In January last year Major Hollywood film studios such as MGM, Paramount Pictures and Time Warner Entertainment took legal steps to prevent the pirating of content held on DVDs. The film giants filed injunctions to stop three defendants publishing "an unauthorised de-encryption formula", used to prevent the copying of material on DVDs, on their Websites. The HP drive will retail from around £549.