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check out the Region Codes page over at OpenDVD.org for a fairly good explanation.

check out the Region Codes page over at OpenDVD.org for a fairly good explanation.

If it can be decoded as it must to be played it can just as easily be cracked. No protection scheme has worked yet. Neither will SACD. Look back at other attempts such as CSS. This will fail just as esily. Just one more step in ripping, that's all.

Well, I pretty much was just trying to be funny, but since you brought it up....

I don't think holding the world's email hostage is a terribly productive way to go about things. Reichschancellor Ashcroft would probably send you up the river on terrorism charges for that. Some of the more positive geek activities that spring to mind include

1. This geek wrote his own operating system which Microsoft now considers its biggest threat.
2. A few more geeks enabled us "illegally" to watch DVDs with that operating system.
3. A young geek got the whole music industry *all* pissed off with this little program, the offspring of which are the very reason for this discussion.

One such educational site would be: http://www.opendvd.org/

My SBLive works in linux, it's the older SBLive Value, but they use the same chipset. What problems have you been having?

DVD drives work in linux now, older kernels that do not have DVD support will see a DVD-ROM drive as a CD-ROM drive.

There are still problems with playing CSS encypted DVD movies on linux, but those are being worked on, and there's a variaty of linux DVD players now.

It's worth noteing that the problems with CSS encypted movies are more about leagel issuses than technical issuses. The OpenDVD.org site has more infomation.

(Yes, I'm running out to buy this one when it comes out too, despite Jar Jar :P)

Consider donating an identical amount (or more?) of the cost of your DVD purchase to the EFF here: https://www.eff.org/support/ ...

I believe that New Zealand is one place. It's even said (on OpenDVD.org) that there seems to be a clause in the WTO treaties that makes these sorts of things illegal. I'm not sure exactly what New Zealand does, perhaps they made it illegal to import or sell any DVD player that honors region codes.

It's not hard to see why the ACCC would find this in violation of Australian consumer protection law. When you look at DVD region coding carefully, you find it's nothing more or less than an attempt by the MPAA to perform price fixing on a global scale. Why not all nations are up in arms against this yet is testimony to the power of these movie studios.

Linux can't even display the stuff to begin with.

Sure it can...
OpenDVD
LiViD

• qrpff: the famous perl implementation on a shirt. This is by far the best DeCSS shirt I have seen. Check it out.
• OpenDVD: Pretty cool shirt.
• Got DeCSS: Still one of my favorites. Only available in forest green for some reason. I own one, its a nice green.

Dot-com vally gets hit, but that has not stopped the revolution - I mean, nobody has ever proofed that internet economy is necesary - it was only assumed. I do not consider the New Economy to be a necesary part of the revolution, and nowadays we get the feeling that internet economy is not feasible - and even this statement could be wrong.

Has the internet failed due to censorship? All gouvernments commit censorship on the internet today, except for certain small European countries. Still, the gouvernments are losing the battle - they should not in all cases.

In my opinion, the problem mankind is dealing with at this moment is the problem of how to classify information. Nobody can explain me what information is, where information begins and where information ends. Promises have not been realized because we simply don't know enough of the phenomena "information". So why would this be a problem? Well, people want to protect:
* their business (patents, CSS, Copyrights etc.) by legal censorship
* their children (violence, sex, etc.) by volunteerial censorship
* their systems (firewalls, anti-virus, passwords) by censorship on system-dataflow via the network

Nobody wants their freedom to be hassled by any form of censorship (censorship is the answer to protect the above points!), so we are afraid of censorship. Censorship is necesary to protect, but the problem with information is that we do not know the borders, let's protect a business model with CSS, censorize it legally, problem is that we censorize far too much. Still, we don't know the the borders of the phenomina 'information', that's the whole problem, we made cars safer, once we understood the problem.

Things that actually help:

1. OpenDVD - actually learn about the DMCA and the case against it.
2. Electronic Frontier Foundation - donate to the actual court case
3. US Congress - Hand write your representatives and inform them of your digust with this law

(sourceCode==freeSpeech)

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According to sources within the motion picture industry, Hollywood movie studios were informed of Idealab's plans late on Thursday, and the studios immediately came up with objections.
They just can't agree with anything, can they?

Idealab first entered the domain-selling business when it acquired the rights to the dot-TV domain from the country of Tuvalo.
But this is totally diffrent. .TV did not require users to install plugins. IMHO, a system like this can never work. Notice that the big two (Netscape and M$) apparently have no comment on it. Without their support, it would never last; because they would have to make this plugin a part of their standard browser, so next time people upgrade they will also gain access to all those new TLDs. Even if they do support it, how will the rest of the users know about these new domains and what's required to view them? Assuming the plugin works by capturing all requests sent to these TLDs and then redirects them to a specific DNS, then anyone who does not have the plugin will be screwed. It's not like other plugins, because with Flash, you get a message saying that you need a plugin to view the page. So anyone who tries to view a page on the new TLDs will just be left with an error message and no clues as to what they can do to fix it.

The only thing that would make a lot of users upgrade is the temptation of .xxx >:) Woohoo, a whole TLD full of pr0n.

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"The motion picture industry's effort to ban computer code that subverts its DVD encryption scheme"

subvert (sb-vûrt)
v. tr. subverted, subverting, subverts.

- To destroy completely; ruin:
- To undermine the character, morals, or allegiance of; corrupt.
- To overthrow completely: "Economic assistance . . . must subvert the existing . . . feudal or tribal order" (Henry A. Kissinger).

So, in context:

The motion picture industry's effort to ban computer code that undermines the morals of its DVD encryption scheme.

Playing a movie on Linux hardly destroys it, or subverts its morals. When will this press bias end? DeCSS is is part of the development of an open project to play DVDs. The fact that playing DVD's may expose them to copying is an artifact of the DVD-CCA's decision to blend play protection and copy protection.

We should all politely remind Mr. Hansen to read openDVD's fact sheet before press time.

sigh!

Until the DVD-CCA stops trying to control who can and cannot play DVDs they have purchased, I suggest not purchasing a DVD player.

Instead, go to the CopyLeft store and purchase a DeCSS t-shirt ($15). $4.00 per T-shirt is donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

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This actually happened during my software engineerring class one day. We were working on our software eng project using the domain name myslo.com and someone instead typed in mysol.com. Amusing as hell.

Of course, it's college... and everyone had a good laugh...

The best qoute from that quarter, from my professor: "I only visit porn sites to make sure that they are within the law." Yeah right ;)
I eat dog. Free DVDs. Horray!

I will use this opportunity to plug the CueCat mirror list, to which your mirror should be added if you are concerned about the right to reverse engineer.

http://www.logorrhea.com/cuecat/mirror s.html

I eat dog. Free DVDs. Horray!

There is nothing wrong with using a licensed DVD play to watch DVD movies on, I don't understand the point you're trying to make. They haven't sued anyone under those conditions.

But they have,or have you not heard of Jon Johansen. Granted, he wasn't arrested for partaking in (c) (viewing (a) under (b) ), he was merely arrested for making (c) possible (actuall, my understanding is that he was arrested for making a gui for (c) ).
I haven't quite figured out weather or not you're karma whoring, and just don't the facts, or if you really are as ignorant of the issues surrounding DeCSS as it seems. Regardless, This post shows your inability to follow anothers (different) train of thought.
For all the propaganda surrounding this issue, go get your ass on over to opendvd.org.
I hope this helps.
-Peter

• Bolted, horse, gate, closing.

The MPAA case would ostensibly seem to be about preventing people from getting a copy of DeCSS, but surely they can't be stupid enough to think they can actually succeed?

Here is something a lot of suits seem to have difficulty grasping: the Internet is more powerful than even the US government. Why did the US government loosen controls on strong-crypto exports? Because it realized that it was playing King Knut against the tide of opensource, and its feet were getting wet.

So if we assume that the MPAA aren't trying to prevent people from getting DeCSS, then what are they trying to do? All the court documents seem devoted to casting the OSS movement in a bad light, but I presume the case is about more than that.

And what do we gain by fighting these cases? When we fight, we are made to look bad. We stand up for ourselves, and people fling mud at us. And the mud sticks - the public are being told by respectable men in suits that we are a bunch of hippy anarchists with no respect at all for copyright laws (hint to lawyers: Stallman, Torsvalds, et. al. wrote their own OS, they didn't just start pirating Windows).

Why fight? We win even if we don't.

BTW, for more CSS/DVD info check out:
www.cssfaq.org
www.opendvd.org

G

I have a mirror list of all the mirrors mentioned on slashdot. If you wish you add a mirror, email me at peri@logorrhea.com

Mirror list: http://www.logorrhea.com/cuecat/mirror s.html

I eat dog. Free DVDs. Horray!

Yes, I understand this. What I am saying is WHY? What do the companies have to gain?

It's simple, by doing so, they are able to make more money.

(The folowing explanation repeats some points already made, just thought you should know...)
To use one of the more common examples:
North American movies in Europe are usually released later than movies in North America. Now this means that by the time that (or even before) the movie hits theatres in Europe it may already be out on DVD.
One of the things that the MPAA doesn't want is for someone in Europe to buy the movie from N. America and view it/show it to their friends before it has come out on DVD in Europe, as by doing so, they have lost revenue generated by ticket sales, revenue which would help pay for the advertisements that are still showing for the movie. Previously with the incompatible formats for video cassettes this wasn't a problem.

Another thing this allows is for a form of price fixing, in N. America, the economy is able to support a higher price for such goods than other parts of the world. Say country X isn't a very rich country, therefore the citizens pay less for their DVD's than residents of the US, Canada, the UK, etc.
Now, if I set up a business which purchased the movies from country X and then sold them much cheaper to residents of other countries, the MPAA members would (theoretically) not be able to charge as much for the DVD's they sell to retailers in those countries. Now the strange thing is, technically this should be possible with CD's (I personally don't know of any incompatabilities, having ordered (more expensive) imports plenty of times, anyone know if they exist?) yet it doesn't seem to have happened.

(What follows is a personal opinion, and as such may be ignored by anyone looking just for the reasoning behind regional encryption)
Now, being a bit of a movie buff, let's say I had an extensive collection of DVD's (I don't as long as the regional encoding remains, I won't) At some point I get a job offer in Europe and move over there, I now have to either A) order all my movies from N. America to play them on my DVD player, or B) have to buy a seperate DVD player (which would be liscenced, which means money goes to the MPAA's European equivalent) So, there's my first problem, the next thing is, let's say my original DVD player breaks down, I now have a large number of DVD's which, it must be noted, I legaly purchased, and as such legally own. I have two choices I can: A) replace them all with the European equivalent or B) order a new player from N. America (and expect to pay a whole lot extra than buying a local one)
I personally would like to make a MPAA member take the stand and say that (under oath) that this point never once came up while the regional encoding was being discussed.

For more information on regional encoding and DVD's in general, check OpenDVD

-GreeHell

Just type out the addresses of web sites that have it. So instead of go to OpenDVD.org to get DeCSS, put go to http://opendvd.org to get CSS. Its not linking.

Interesting. RIAA is being charged with pricefixing using MAP.

If the plaintifs win this one, I would imagine that this could be a springboard for a similar case against the MPAA and it's region-coding pricefixing scheme.

The only difference is that region-coding is (at the moment) not dividing up countries, and in particular, doesn't rip of the US quite so spectacularly as, for example, the UK.

A decent DVD usually costs a bit under £20, often with a number of features missing from other regions.

Quite apart from the fact that encrypting a product and only allowing you to use it under 'controlled conditions' or a 'secure box' is quite unethical. If I buy something, I can do whatever the hell I like with it.

OpenDVD has a fair amount on this subject.

If there is one thing that SlashDotters should have noticed by now is that there is no "Watermark" that cannot be broken. I'll use OpenDVD as an example. DVD, as I recall, was also supposed to be uncopy-able/unplayable without the breaking some software locks.

Why would this be any different?

• DVD and Linux Support
• LinuxVideo.org
• OpenDVD.org
• Sigmadesigns Product - they have couple DVD products that you may find interesting. NetStream 2000 has Linux drivers (BETA) available on their FTP site.
• Linux DVD from Liberty Surf.

Hope this help.

Well, X may not be the best thing out there (in fact, it pretty much sucks for a lot of things..) I've heard about things like Display Postscript and NeWS, and perhaps development should be refocused on rebuilding them and similar projects.

There is a Display Ghostscript project, and many people have heard about the Berlin project. I've watched Berlin a bit, and I'm not sure it's going in a direction I like (they seem to only want one widget toolkit, which is both good and bad).

Obviously, for any of these projects to take off as projects independent of X (right now, they are often used as a layer on top of X), framebuffer support in the Linux kernel must be improved. Therefore, before we go off trying to re-write the world, a good foundation of security and stability must be built into the kernel.

I know many people don't like the idea of having graphics in the kernel, though this can be worked around by having modules that merely open a pathway to the video registers and memory and grant you safe access to the hardware (i.e., no more suid-root graphics systems).

Blah, I'm beginning to ramble (plus I really need to get some work done...)
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Something you may not know about monitors is that having a really big (CRT) screen doesn't necessarily give you the best experience. I was looking at some big Sonys (I probably won't buy one.. I don't think I'll pull in enough cash this summer) and I noticed that the huge 21" displays run at around 96dpi (even at 2048x1536 resolution). However, the monitor I have right now (15", probably about 14" viewable) runs at 1320x992 and has a dpi of about 118. This means that my display can give me crisper text (though I can't fit as much of it on the same size display).

200+ dpi would rock.
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Just out of curiosity, has much effort been put into vector displays in the past decade or so? I presume work has been done (probably for CAD shops..), but they are vastly outnumbered by raster displays.. Also, I suppose it would be (theoretically) possible to convert an ordinary raster display into a vector display, but I have only a small understanding of what goes into a CRT display.. (and there would probably be deficiencies, like you might only be able to display in one color or something..)
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Perhaps this feature could be used to do things like change the phone to ring in vibrate mode, turn down the ringer volume, or something like that. Preferably, this would all be user-configurable, of course..
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Does Disney even own the DVD rights in Japan?

Ok, so this is what I have learned from my adventures with the DeCSS case. Disney is a big part of the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) which includes all the big movie companies (Ex: Time Warner, 20th Century Fox, Paramount... etc). One of the MPAA's jobs is to try and stop piracy of videos, dvd's, or what have you.

For this reason, the MPAA is in kahoots with the DVD-CCA (DVD-Copy-Contol-Association). They came up with the CSS (Contents Scrambling System) encryption scheme which allowed them to make DVD's only playable in certian regions at certian times.

That's part of the reason why they are trying to stop the spread of DeCSS (Which is futile), because it threatens their control of the global movie industry.

If you are interested you can download DeCSS here, or learn more about the case at 2600 and opendvd.org
...I hope that link doesn't get /. in too much trouble :)

Yes, this is a problem. The University of Minnesota nearly adopted a no-SYNs policy for the residence halls, where all SYN packets would be blocked. Fortunately, there was a group of individuals who noticed that there were many `legal' services that would break. Identd would be broken, preventing many people from using IRC. Any sort of net phone software would probably stop working (unless they used UDP or something). Even ICQ would have probably stopped working. The staff at UMN is pretty smart, and it's pretty surprising that they even suggested doing that...

Anyway, I am getting concerned about cable and DSL companies that want to take similar policies. I know that many companies scan their subscribers' computers looking for anything remotely troublesome. You could probably get your connection shut off for even having identd listening on an FTP port, even if in.ftpd or whatever is not installed on your system.

I know that bandwidth is an issue, but it will always be an issue.. I think you could justifiably block a service for a certain amount of time, until your bandwidth supply is enhanced, but they should always be temporary things.

Of course, one thing that my family's cable provider (@home) does is limit upstream bandwidth to some pretty low numbers. I think it's sitting at 112kbps right now. Certainly, that's still a pretty good speed, but it does have an impact...
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IMO, the GPL is slightly less `real' than most other shrink-wrap licenses (and that's really what the GPL is, in most cases. Of course, the GPL only goes into effect when you use or modify the software, not just when you open the `box'..). You (usually) don't click any `accept' button before installing the software. Certainly, the GPL comes with your software, but you usually don't get prompted to accept or reject it.

Where this gets interesting is in the area of DVDs. The movie industry expects consumers to use licensed players to play those movies. However, there is no contract of any sort with the consumer stating that they are required to do so. So, if the worst happens, and the GPL is struck down, we at least know that the DVD industry is way out of line by trying to enforce invisible contracts..
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Hey, that's pretty cool. Definitely one of the good things that has come about because of Windows compatibility research and work. Of course, I'll be a lot happier once the driver gets re-written in portable source code.

It works, although the framerate was quite slow for me (using the SDL output on XF86 3.3.6). I just compiled glx.so, so I'll have to try it again with the OpenGL output. Sound was way out of sync, but it may again be because of SDL. If not, I'll just blame my CPU speed (375 MHz)
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Of course, using the Windows driver should only be a stepping stone. Ideally, people will examine how the driver does what it does, and then re-implement it for Linux proper.
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Of course, part of the reason Slashdot still uses gifs is because the corresponding pngs do not display correctly in many browsers (including Netscape..)
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Okay, I fixed your quotes and incorrect punctuation.. I hate question marks all over the place..

I highly doubt that MS owns the rights to DVD.

You're right. They don't.

I'm sure if Creative would/could make a DVD player for linux it would.

*cough*

But they haven't. How is that Microsoft's fault?

It isn't. However, Microsoft has behaved in much the same way as the MPAA/RIAA. They would like to control how/when/where people use their software just as much as the movie and music industries would like to control when people view their content. They want money. Lots and lots of money.

You have a TV card for Linux right?

No.

It has a video/audio in jack right? Buy a normal DVD player and plug the jacks in.. Easy DVD for linux.. That what I do when I want DVD on Linux..

You *might* be able to convice me to do that if the TV card had an S-Video input. No way in hell would I do that with RCA jacks or coaxial cable *shudder*

DVD for linux isn't Microsoft's fault... so but your blame somewhere else for that one..

Very true..
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It's possible that your display has a different ordering of the color cells, or perhaps you selected the wrong gamma..
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Well, the new bit is the calculations that go into making sure that the `color' is distributed properly. If you select the wrong gamma for your display, you get all sorts of colored fringes on the letters.
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Untrue. My Sony Trinitron monitor has the color cells aligned much as they would be on an LCD. I did see an improvement in readability when looking at the right images (gamma = 1.8 on my display)
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> What does that all mean? It means QT on linux almost guarenteed

LOL

> (why wouldnt apple want that market?)

I wish I knew, but all indications thus far seem to show that they are working to distance themselves from Linux...
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Maybe I'm being dumb here (is the poster just talking about playback?) but you clearly can serve Quicktime content without proprietary hardware and software solutions.

Yes, he's talking about playing back the video. Contrary to popular belief (at least in the media and in Public Relations departments), Linux is quite popular with tech-heads for a desktop operating system. This includes the fans of scifi-fantasy movies such as Star Wars, Titan A.E., The X-Men, and many others.
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Okay, but I resent being force-fed with Quicktime files, especially when coming from a Linux/Unix server using the `open source' serving software.. Apple has played a certain amount of lip service to the open source/Free software movement, but largely with technologies that are probably more beneficial for Apple to have as open source, rather than being beneficial to the end users. (that's all IMHO, though)

I should also point out that it is especially important when media files to make sure that they can be read by as many people as possible. Not only do you reach a larger audience now, but you reach a larger audience 10, 100, or 1000 years from now when historians try to read these files again.
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Well, one thing is that the compression ratio for Quicktime is significantly better than MPEG/MPEG2.. Of course, I do appreciate the fact that MPEG is a much more open standard than Quicktime/Real, but even MPEG/MPEG2 does not yet have consistently high-quality playback on open source players (at least not that I've seen)
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Okay this is a bit offtopic..

I just bought a Hollywood Plus MPEG decoder card, and did a little hacking to get it to work with NTSC (just had to change a few register values, nothing fancy). Reading over the documentation for the NTSC/PAL encoder, I see that interlacing can be turned on and off. Doing a search on the 'net reveals that people are talking about progressive scan NTSC, but I can't seem to find any information about sets that actually understand it. I've twiddled the bits on my H+, but my TV still displays in interlaced mode (not that I really expected it to suddenly do progressive scan...)

Anyone have more info?
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Actually, MPEG looks pretty crummy whenever it has to deal with slight changes in color. I was watching a DVD and saw artifacts all over in one scene of Pulp Fiction where the main characters were standing in front of blank off-white walls. Slight variations are a challenge for video coders, as many of their algorithms are based upon fairly large changes. Small changes just don't get noticed..
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This is why we need to educate the general public and media on things like this

That would be a cool idea, but Have you ever heard of the DeCSS case? I think what is happening as a result of it is that the major media companies decide to ignore the plight of individuals , and particulalry those associated with the open source movement. result: The only people who can be educated are the ones that already know about the problem... like /.ers.

we need someone with some power to stand up against the DVD "elite" (more likely, seeing the DeCSS code, the DVD l33t). After i read this article and the essays on OpenDVD.org i got sick to my stomach. We think Microsoft is screwing consumers (because they are), but look ot the MPAA and the DVD Consortium. they are terrible. the region code idea is monopolistic, the second-rate scrambling system sucks (but we're not allowed to do anything about it), and now we find out that the video signal is messed up in some way "to prevent copying," making the picture quality way less than what it should be. they are allowed to continue this reign of terror under the guise of *copyright*. give me a break. i've stuck with my trusty VCR for 10 years now, and it looks like i will not touch DVD unless one lands on my lap. thank God for LiViD. otherwise i would hate it even more than i do. this is a key example of a technology that could have revolutionized at least something, but instead being held back to its toddler years by greedy corporate-types. blah.

Well, OK, but I don't want what happened to OS/2 to happen to Linux. Companies justified not porting to OS/2 because some versions of OS/2 could run Windows 3.x binaries..
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Right.. Most people just don't question what they get when they pull their computer out of the box. They are happy to just use what comes with the system, and don't even question what else might have come with it. Computers are much different than cars, where you are stuck with many options from the time you buy the car until it is dead and buried (well, unless you are a skilled metal worker..) I imagine most people see computers the same way, which is very wrong.

I think I'm going to try and contact Best Buy and some other `consumer' computer vendors. I'd like to induce them to question whether they should only be selling boxes with Windows on them, or if it would be an option for them to pre-load anything else. My opinion is that Microsoft has taken actions that are not in the best interest of consumers, and that Best Buy (a conduit for many different computer products, including boxed versions of Linux) has an important role to take in helping consumers make the best choice when they buy computers and computer products. *shrug* it's a fairly complicated issue, and I hope they can come to a good decision..
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Heh, I can't reach the site -- the IP range owned by Napster is blocked by my University's big-ass router..
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