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LiViD - The Open Source DVD Player by ebola-zaire · 2000-04-02 20:38 · Score: 3 · on Are There Linux DVD Players on the Market?

The guys at the Linux Video Project have been working on an Open Source DVD Player (among other things). Their DVD player looks like it will be great, but still needs some work in the performance area. I also suggest you check out their DVD Playing HOWTO.

LiViD - The Open Source DVD Player by ebola-zaire · 2000-04-02 20:38 · Score: 3 · on Are There Linux DVD Players on the Market?

The guys at the Linux Video Project have been working on an Open Source DVD Player (among other things). Their DVD player looks like it will be great, but still needs some work in the performance area. I also suggest you check out their DVD Playing HOWTO.

LiViD - The Open Source DVD Player by ebola-zaire · 2000-04-02 20:38 · Score: 3 · on Are There Linux DVD Players on the Market?

The guys at the Linux Video Project have been working on an Open Source DVD Player (among other things). Their DVD player looks like it will be great, but still needs some work in the performance area. I also suggest you check out their DVD Playing HOWTO.

"Proprietary Formats" are still a problem by Teancum · 2000-02-24 01:13 · Score: 3 · on On Preservation of Digital Information

I've been working with the Linux Video group where we've been trying to make an open source player for DVD discs. The ONLY problem that we're fighting right now is not the know-how to get it done, but rather trying to obtain the file format documents for DVD-Video and being able to use them legally. Indeed, the recent deCSS program is another really good example of how file format specifications can be illegal to implement, even if you have obtained the specifications legally.

The way that the DVD Fourm (formerly known as the DVD Consortium, with oversees the DVDCCA... this is the group of companies that cross-license each other's patents and shares information regarding DVD development) currenly requires you to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to obtain the specifications, and that NDA also prohibits you from even discussing the specifications with anybody unless they have also signed the same NDA. Since this is covered under the trade secret laws, this particular bit of intellectual property is theirs theoretically forever. At least until you can hire a bunch of lawyers to demonstrate that a DVD is no longer a trade secret.

I've also set up a seperate mailing list from the main Linux Video group that is in the process of developing an Open Video Disc specification which is trying to allow people to develop products without having to pay royalties or deal with patent infringments. Fees for most of the current video formats range from over $10,000 (for the DVD specs.... license fees are on top of that) to the MPEG Licensing Authority who is being quite reasonable for most close-source projects, but if you read the details of what you must do to license a product, is contrary to the nature of most open-source projects. It is still possible to write a GPL'ed MPEG player, but it would only be free as in speech and not free as in beer. In fact, you would probabally have to charge somebody to download the software. Shareware MPEG players are probabally skating on some very thin ice legally, and certainly part of the registration costs would have to go to the MPEGLA.

One of the things that is so nice about HTML is the fact that this standard is open, patent and royalty free. If CERN had tried to put a patent on HTML I doubt that the web would have developed nearly so quickly. Or rather imagine if Apple's hypercard system had been developed with the GPL and file formats were made open for anybody on any platform to use.

One of the things that I believe is killing the Unicode character encoding is that all kinds of intellectual property restrictions are placed on it, and you need to pay royalties to develop much software that uses it. Again, think what would have happened with ASCII had it been kept closed up, and why EBDIC isn't being used for character encoding.

More importantly, open and free specifications are critical to data preservation, and a point that really hasn't been brought up by Calc (the author of the original post on /.)

"Proprietary Formats" are still a problem by Teancum · 2000-02-24 01:13 · Score: 3 · on On Preservation of Digital Information

I've been working with the Linux Video group where we've been trying to make an open source player for DVD discs. The ONLY problem that we're fighting right now is not the know-how to get it done, but rather trying to obtain the file format documents for DVD-Video and being able to use them legally. Indeed, the recent deCSS program is another really good example of how file format specifications can be illegal to implement, even if you have obtained the specifications legally.

The way that the DVD Fourm (formerly known as the DVD Consortium, with oversees the DVDCCA... this is the group of companies that cross-license each other's patents and shares information regarding DVD development) currenly requires you to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to obtain the specifications, and that NDA also prohibits you from even discussing the specifications with anybody unless they have also signed the same NDA. Since this is covered under the trade secret laws, this particular bit of intellectual property is theirs theoretically forever. At least until you can hire a bunch of lawyers to demonstrate that a DVD is no longer a trade secret.

I've also set up a seperate mailing list from the main Linux Video group that is in the process of developing an Open Video Disc specification which is trying to allow people to develop products without having to pay royalties or deal with patent infringments. Fees for most of the current video formats range from over $10,000 (for the DVD specs.... license fees are on top of that) to the MPEG Licensing Authority who is being quite reasonable for most close-source projects, but if you read the details of what you must do to license a product, is contrary to the nature of most open-source projects. It is still possible to write a GPL'ed MPEG player, but it would only be free as in speech and not free as in beer. In fact, you would probabally have to charge somebody to download the software. Shareware MPEG players are probabally skating on some very thin ice legally, and certainly part of the registration costs would have to go to the MPEGLA.

One of the things that is so nice about HTML is the fact that this standard is open, patent and royalty free. If CERN had tried to put a patent on HTML I doubt that the web would have developed nearly so quickly. Or rather imagine if Apple's hypercard system had been developed with the GPL and file formats were made open for anybody on any platform to use.

One of the things that I believe is killing the Unicode character encoding is that all kinds of intellectual property restrictions are placed on it, and you need to pay royalties to develop much software that uses it. Again, think what would have happened with ASCII had it been kept closed up, and why EBDIC isn't being used for character encoding.

More importantly, open and free specifications are critical to data preservation, and a point that really hasn't been brought up by Calc (the author of the original post on /.)

Re:Oops, Plain Old Text isn't by maroberts · 2000-02-20 23:52 · Score: 2 · on Hackers

POT mode seems to have gone to POT [ :-) ] since it understand most HTML, the only difference seems to be paragraphs - see the following:

If this was POT:
this wouldn't be bold
this wouldn't be italic
this wouldn't be a link

this wouldn't be teletype
this would lack emphasis

unordered list
item1
item2

this wouldn't be a list
item1
item2

this would be weak

break
break

this is blockquoted

Re:Hackers becoming disenchanted with it by QuMa · 2000-02-11 07:43 · Score: 1 · on CSS: About Piracy, or About Content Regulation?

Hmmm, www.linuxvideo.org actually.

linuxvideo is down. by Anonymous Coward · 2000-02-04 15:23 · Score: 0 · on Jon Johansen's Answers to Your DeCSS Questions

linuxvideo seems to be down.

...On a more practical note.. by LordChaos · 2000-02-03 05:46 · Score: 1 · on DeCSS Injunction Ruling

In my opinion, the discussion currently going on in the LiVid mailing list at the moment has the more practical solution to the Linux DVD-playing problem: Linux Mpeg-2 players can still be developed (there is nothing illegal about them) - and DeCSS can be distributed as a binary-only plugin to these players.
Using this method, the developers of Linux DVD players are not putting themselves at risk - and furthermore the DeCSS plugins can be developed off-shore (not a very hard task, DeCSS didn't come from the US anyways).
As for the actual use of the DeCSS program in any form being illegal soon, everyone who has never jay-walked - raise their hands.

Re:Lessons learned by ppanon · 2000-01-31 12:59 · Score: 1 · on Interview: Jon Johansen of deCSS Fame (UPDATED)

You seem to be unaware of the LiVid Project.

From their status page:

What is available now?

Currently most of the software that has been developed is mostly pre-alpha quality software intended for developers to use to test different technologies and methods to provide function. The most popular code is the DVD player code, which is scattered across the CVS in several different modules. There are plans to coordinate the efforts and build one dvd player architecture.

The Media Player is just in the design phase, and has been on hold while work on an experimental new interface is being worked on. The new interface, Projector, is being developed by Stea Greene. He is looking for a lot of feedback on the design and hopes to have working tests of it soon.

So, yes, it's not yet widely available as RPM (or whatever) packages and not easy to find, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It should also be obvious that it takes a little longer to develop a DVD movie player that reads the data from the DVD, including all appropriate handshaking, then calls the DeCSS code to decrypt the data stream, does MPEG2 decoding, and finally drives the output to the Linux Open Sound System and to either X or SVGALib video subsystems - all while providing reasonable performance from IDE DVD drives that start by sucking up a good chunk of your CPU power. Yep, that's certainly easy to develop in a few months. It's no wonder the MPAA wants to rush to trial; the longer they take, the easier it will be to prove that DeCSS has legitimate (non-piracy) uses as part of LiViD.

One of your better articles, Katz by Stiletto · 2000-01-30 22:25 · Score: 3 · on China and the MPA

As far as the Chinese government goes, it doesn't seem like there is much anyone can do about it if they don't live in China (and little anyone who lives there can really do abou it).

But the RIAA, MPAA, and other various "cartels" in the USA can be fought.

As it stands, the Linux DVD project is just a bunch of viewing tools, and filesystem and hardware drivers--not something the average Linux luser is going to be able to put together yet.

What will finally put the nail in the MPAA's coffin is a graphical, userland program that is simple to install, and comparible to the various Windows players out there. Get it into RedHat or one of the other distributions.

Think of it from the journalists' point of view: sure, we can mirror the source all over the place but face it, a bunch of source files is meaningless to a clueless reporter, or worse, to them it means hacker. A full-featured (at least professional looking) application that any luser can install and play DVDs out of the box would really get the point of this lawsuit across to the various journalists and shapers of public opinion.

If you are a bored coder looking for a project, please consider helping the Linux Video project!
________________________________

DVD player by SEAL · 2000-01-26 03:17 · Score: 1 · on DVD CCA Emergency Hearing to seal DeCSS

This first one may get /.ed so someone please mirror it: http://home.germany.net/100-5083/ ... and

http://linuxvideo.org

SEAL

Re:People, people, people... by Carl · 2000-01-24 23:09 · Score: 4 · on DeCSS Author Arrested

This as almost what the LiViD people did.

Frank Stevenson wrote a Cryptanalysis of the Content Scrambling System which can be found on:
crypto.gq.nu

It might be a good idea to mirror his paper also for such a documentation project. (It seems to be far more important then the actual DeCSS source.)

Re:A call to arms by FigWig · 2000-01-24 13:54 · Score: 1 · on Jon Johansen Indicted by the MPA(A)

Just download the tar file from:
http://www.linuxvideo.org/developer/dl .phtml
Or follow the instructions on that page on using the CVS server.

"In a future product" by scjody · 2000-01-22 21:29 · Score: 4 · on More Companies Jump on the Linux Train

There has been discussion of this on the LiViD mailing list for quite some time. What gets me is that Sigma Designs could easily release the specs and allow Linux to be supported in their current product, but instead they're making Linux users buy a whole new card.

And we're supposed to be pleased with this?

Re:Damage to Plaintiffs by Captn+Pepe · 2000-01-21 15:20 · Score: 1 · on Preliminary Injunction Issued in DVD CCA Case

I'd actually suggest contesting the claim that the monetary damages are so different. The EFF lawyers made the point that bandwidth considerations severely limit the rate at which pirated DVDs could propogate over the internet (and burning one yourself has got to be slow as well).

Moreover, they should consider the cost of modifying pages to remove the links. Most of the people I know who do professional web design get upwards of $30/hr. If they sum this amount over the number of people they're asking to modify their sites, they could produce a surprising quantity.

Everybody link to Project LiViD. WHOIS says they're registered from Berlin, so I'm assuming they'll stay up regardless.

Disclaimer: I do physics, not web design.

Re:Sounds like it's time for a class action suit by Cramer · 2000-01-21 04:42 · Score: 2 · on MPAA Sending Out DMCA Demand Letters

In the modern "sue-happy" world, you're free to sue whomever you please, but I would ask that you leave Zoran out of the cross-hairs. They have put up no roadblocks to supporting their hardware -- they gave LiVid the specs to the Vaddis III (zr36710) chip. Every other vendor [*] (that I know of) has refused to release anything. [The dxr2 driver was reverse engineered before Creative branded it theirs.]

Despite the unwillingness of Matrox to say anything about their DVD add-on (which uses the Vaddis III), significant progress has been made in supporting it. (That's all I've done on the weekends for last month or so.) There's still alot of work to be done, tho'. At this point, I'm not concerned with CSS as I'm working with unencrypted VOBs from a "DVD" screen saver that came with the drive -- "tiny", simple, and self-contained.

Eventually, DVD CCA will have to come to some agreement towards (non-windows) licensing of CSS. Should they refuse to allow non-windows (non-x86) playback, then there certainly will be a legal backlash -- anti-competitive, monopolistic, etc. I hope they are thinking about these things. Personally, I'd much rather the decoder hardware handle the CSS crap (read: waste of time.) As I understand, RPC-2 allows for CSS key transfers directly between the decoder and the drive so CSS then becomes almost nothing at all. (Of course, that maybe in reference to set-top hardware.)

Post the Code! by Romen · 2000-01-20 09:35 · Score: 1 · on MPAA Sending Out DMCA Demand Letters

Stand up for what you believe in. Post the code on your homepage, or at least link to it. Good sites are:

LiVid

OpenDVD

The more people who post it, the more impact we will have. If everyone with a web page does this, we will win by default.
Romen

Mirrors part 1 by Anonymous Coward · 2000-01-19 02:42 · Score: 0 · on Corel Draw 9 for Linux Needs Beta Testers

Visit Humpin! (No, it's not what you think!)

Temporary restraining order DENIED!

Thanks to the efforts of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the organization and support provided by a few of our fellow defendants we are still here! Another hearing is scheduled for January 14th.

We would like to point out to all of the mirror sites with things like "fuck the lawyers" on them that it is because of a generous group of lawyers that we are still here. These lawyers are working for free (or much less than they could get by going over to the Dark Side) and don't deserve this kind of abuse.

Here is the EFF's stance on this case.

Save a copy of this web page now!

We have just been informed that the DVD Copy Control Association is seeking a restraining order against us (named as "Doe 28") for distributing DeCSS and linking to pages that distribute it and linking to pages that link to pages that distribute it.

Section 48 of this request states that we supposedly "have received notice through the MPA and refused to remove the information at issue". This is absolutely false! We have never received any such request (from the MPA or anybody else for that matter) and we obviously were not given the opportunity to refuse! Either Jared Bobrow needs to go back to law school or the DVD CCA needs to get a new firm. This is the kind of sloppy work that could get an important document thrown out.

Here is a 2600 story on this.

Explanation on legality of this information

The software (source as well as binaries) offered on this site can be freely redistributed because it was published under the GNU General Public License. The purpose of this software is not illegal copying of DVD disks. It is meant to provide information necessary to be able to program a DVD player for Linux. To do this, the CSS system needs to be incorporated in the player. Recently the (very weak) DVD content scrambling system was deciphered, freeing the way for a Linux DVD player. The CSS system is not a copy protection system, since it does not prevent copying of the disk. Writing information about the way an encryption scheme functions is completely legal. The source code and binaries on this site are completely legal too, since they contain no code from the DVD consortium or its members. The sources and programs on this site were written by third parties using clean-room reverse engineering methods which are (ready?) completly legal.

Attention www.rhythm.cx was hosting a list of mirrors for these files. That list of mirrors has been replaced with a page reading "This site has been taken down for legal reasons." Here's what the maintainer put on the site the day it was shut down:

NOTE (Thu, Nov 11, 12:17pm EST): I've recently been informed that a law firm which is likely to be one that would try get these mirrors taken down has been visiting this mirror site as well as others. With that said, there is a possibility that I may have to remove this site in the near future because like everyone else, I can't afford to go to court to fight it. Luckly, it seems fairly unlikely that any law firm will ever be able to get rid of all these mirrors at this point (there are currently 41 in 8 different countries and this list is growing every day). However, I have only seen very few mirror _lists_ like this one anyplace. If anyone has the resources, it might be wise to mirror this list of mirrors as well so that the right people will still know that these mirrors exist.

Here is a 2600 story with more details on how rhythm.cx was shut down.

Current Mirrors Last updated: Wed, Jan 19, 12:13am EST
Numbers are only for the maintainer's convenience

We apologize for the length of time between updates. This list has gotten quite large and thus more difficult to maintain.

Much thanks to this site for listing mirrors of the mirror lists.

Re:Go LiViD! by Robert+Wilde · 2000-01-17 22:31 · Score: 2 · on Voting Begins for $100k Beanie Awards

LiViD may very well be the most important consumer open-source project being undertaken. Linux simply won't be able to be competitive as a mainstream consumer OS without eye-candy like DVD playback.

Time is also a key issue here. The sooner DVD playback finds it's way into Red Hat and other distributions, the more difficult it will be for the MPAA and the DVDCCA to convince a judge to ban the project.

Here's an excerpt from a recent MPAA court filing:
DeCSS remains (for the moment) a "hacker phenomenon." One of our principal concerns is that, in the absence of a judicial finding that DeCSS is illegal, its use will become more widespread. ... There is even the risk that DeCSS would be commercialized and offered to the general public, either in the form of retail software or as part of a DVD player

Let's make the MPAA's fears come true!

LiViD! by Crow- · 2000-01-17 22:22 · Score: 1 · on Vote:Most Improved Open Source Project

check out linuxvideo.org.. These are the guys bringinging us DVD and hardware accelerated video playback, they deserve it the most.

Re:I misread the title, but it gave me an idea any by Cramer · 2000-01-15 14:21 · Score: 2 · on Distributed.net CSC Success

CSS keys can be recovered in seconds (and have.) See the LiVid mailing list archives (www.linuxvideo.org) for several explanations, example code, and a large block of keys recovered with the code.

CSS is laughablly weak.

Software sounds great, how about drivers? by qseep · 2000-01-10 09:47 · Score: 3 · on Free Realtime Video Editing for Linux

I have followed the Broadcast 2000 development for a while, and I am both impressed by and thankful for their work. The drivers appear to be the missing link. Unfortunately, on the Broadcast 2000 page, they skip the issue of drivers, simply saying that any "Video4Linux" drivers will work, without so much as providing a link to a Video4Linux project page.

At least it's a good sign that they're sticking to a standard, rather than creating their own drivers. Unfortunately, the driver situation seems to be quite a mess. There's Video4Linux, Video4Linux 2, LiViD, and other projects and I'm not sure how they're related. Most of them seem to support mostly TV-in-a-window cards rather than full-motion video capture.

It looks like work on the Matrox Marvel drivers is coming along, which is good for me because I just bought an Athlon 550 and Matrox Marvel G400-TV! >geek gloatCineGX which seems to have disappeared. The idea was to create a framework for handling video, applying filters and codecs in a pipelike fashion. That would mean that you could, say, stream an AVI file from your disk, and show it as a picture within a live TV feed, showing it on the screen and spitting it into an MPEG2 file on disk all at the same time (provided you have enough processing power and/or hardware assistance). Most editing could be reduced to problems of mixing and matching streams and filters. The editing GUI would exist only to provide a project management function.

Re:Titanic first by Adnans · 1999-12-22 03:08 · Score: 1 · on Rumoured DVD Release of Episode One in April, 2000

Bah, get "The Matrix" instead. And I am able to watch it in Linux, although the sound is desynced .

Check out LinuxVideo under LiVid. Get dvd_play, ac3dec and nist, follow the dvd_play instructions. Unfortunately, you do need lots of CPU cycles since the code is not optimized (oh, and a G200/G400 with BES helps too ;-)

-adnans

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