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More on LinDVD
periscope wrote to us about the Wired story that's currently running about InterVideo's LinDVD. We've mentioned this situation before, but now it looks like something's actually going to happen. As I said before, InterVideo has the CSS license to produce a player that the MPAA won't throw a hissy-fit over.
It's cheap, and there's plenty of cracks available so you don't have to pay their TAX. Plus you own the fucking thing.
Freedom or death. I'm being a bit extreme, but that's it: I'm not going to alienate *my* freedom, *our* freedom, just to allow the corporate bastards in hollywood to buy a few more benzos. And save me the bit about paying the artists -- Valenti and co. have no problem screwing other countries' cinema industries and artists. But hey, they're doing it "legally".
As a sidenote: I'm not being nationalistic here. French cinema sucks as of late. I've only seen one passable french movie lately (Peut-Etre) and it was'nt that good anyway.
The MPAA is a cartel, a monopoly, they should be treated the same way Microsoft is being treated, there is no question about it. Getting moral lessons from those bastards is beyond any kind of decency. They are infringing laws as much, if not more, than your average Joe-w4r3z kiddie. The fact that they have power and money to get away with it does'nt make a difference.
Now there's one thing that bothers me above all, it's the message they're trying to pass, that *us* free software advocates/users are just freeloaders. Listen: I barely have any illegal MP3z, I don't have *any* so-called "pirated" software with their illegal End-User Lick my Ass, and I've even managed to lose my only ripped-off movie: SW Phantom Menace -- one of the crappiest movies I've seen last year. I use Free Software, and I have a whole bunch of CDs I bought at the monopolistically inflated street price in shops.
SO GET OFF MY BACK WITH THE MORALIZING BULLSHIT
The MPAA and friends are just like those conservatives politicians you find fucking in brothels with 16 year old girls.
But the MPAA isn't the enemy here - ignorance is.
Our foe is the MPAA's ignorance of the futility and harmfulness of CSS. Our goal is to convince them that DeCSS isn't harmful to their bottom line - much like VCRs weren't back in the 80s. They don't believe it yet, but once they're convinced, the battle will be won.
If we really want to make MPAA the enemy, we should forget DVDs (and DeCSS) altogether and push for newer/better/open distributed video standards to replace DVDs rather than decode them.
Ultimately, we need to decide what we really want.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
So if I don't happen to be running Linux on a main distribution,I'm still locked out of playing movies I paid for
First it's "The Industry won't give us a player!"
Now it's "The Industry won't give *all* of us a player!"
I can understand the frustration, but what confuses me is the misdirected efforts of the Linux/Free Software community.
Look -- the legal and technical framework that was built into the DVD format sucks. You know it, I know it, 10000 other Slashdot posters can't shut up about CSS, Region locking, etc, etc, etc. So, what's the natural reaction? Keep buying those DVDs and try to 'hack' the system with DeCSS, mashing the buttons on your playstation, whatever. Interesting, sure, but don't fool yourself into thinking that little hacks are a long term solution to the future of closed digital media.
You can't play the DVDs that you paid for in the exact manner you want. That fact is a very important aspect of the design of the DVD format. You should have known it, and probably did know it, when you put your money down on the counter. The only real solution is to stop buying DVDs until they fix the format!
Time and time again, Slashdotters declare that they won't use Windows 2000, Mac OS X, Solaris, and so on because of the licensing conditions. But for some reason, you'll happily tramp on your principles just to see "The Matrix" in glorious 525-line resolution. Would it really kill you to boycott buying/renting the DVD and instead support the (relatively) free formats of VHS or even LaserDisc?
There's lots of complaining about the MPAA and their tactics on this board. But the implicit message is always "I want to watch DVDs!" -- while you may be condemning them, you are actually implicitly supporting the MPAA and their encrypted, copy-protected digital media vision of the future. By "buying in", you are implicity part of the problem.
You are all gadget freaks; You are all early adopters; You actually have a lot of power in this market (the market value of Slashdot/Andover proves this). So quit being complicit with the MPAA's master plan, and start voting with your wallets for media formats that you can support!
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
A binary-only player raises several questions-- will it work with all the distributions? Probably not. Especially foreign-language distros.
The other critical thing, as pointed out to me by a poster in the previous article about whether or not there is a DVD player for Linux, is that x86 platforms are not Linux. If this is binary only, this still leaves PPC, MIPS, Alpha, Sparc, 680x0 and whatever else you've got Linux on (Z80? 6502? Homebrew core on Xilinx FPGA?) in the dark. This is a player for a FEW distros running on x86 platforms only. It is NOT a player for "Linux" in general.
We still leave out other OSes as well-- AmigaOS, BeOS, BSD, Commercial Unixes, and whatever else. And this gains us nothing in the fight against silly region codes, price fixing, forced commercials, playback conditions, and the general loss of traditional rights associated with the format.
While I don't disagree on the main point of your message, perhaps you're unaware that many of the current software DVD players (ie for Windows) do let you do things like stop frame, frame grabbing, and frame advance.
Indeed, there are other programs out there that will let you capture a video clip (sans audio) by repeatedly sending "grab frame" and "frame advance" messages to the software player.
But yes, I'd like a player (or better, access to the player source) that lets me do whatever I want with the data stream. For example, I'd like to see a player that gives me the option of doing a split-screen display to simultaneously view two (or more) different camera-angle tracks (current players limit you to displaying one or the other) if present.
-- Alastair
Hi,
6 238&cid=87
Well, it's good to see my submission got in. I wrote some information for you all in an earlier story from today, at:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/03/31/15
That should help to clear some things up for you.
Cheers,
Jonathan (periscope).
http://www.jonmasters.org/
If the Xing-player is shareware, then the clickthrough is probably enforceable... If you don't pay for the software, you have no right to expect to be able to use it - thus an EULA could be legit. The reason shrinkwrap and traditional click-through licenses aren't valid is because you've already bought the software by the time you see the license.
.VOB files to the HD, that way we can say that we aren't trying to pirate movies, that many easier ways already exist. Especially if we only release a library, incomplete from a pirating sense, but essential for a player.
There's a good chance that the anti-reverse engineering clause is void, but the idea is to not bother breaking it, just to save ourselves one more legal hassle. And we all know how a company or association (MPAA) can win even when they're in the wrong, just by buying the trial, especially against poor hackers who can't really afford lawyers.
So, the idea is to avoid as many sticky legalities as possible.
I've seen many legal opinions on the issue and most people seem to believe that for the purpose of being a key, a key isn't copyrightable. (You could copyright a poem, but if it's a required key, people would be free to use that poem in that context.) But, even assuming the key can be freely distributed, why try? What would be ideal is simply writing the codec to strip the keys from the first disk inserted after installing, that way we don't have to distribute any keys or possibly copyrighted material.
What could also help the cause is someone to write a tool that uses a software decoder and hacks it to write
It wouldn't matter. You can't write a contract (which a license is) for performance of illegal acts, nor can one which forbids illegal acts have any force, it's assumed that illegal acts are outside the scope of contract law.
Besides, there's no sort of operation I'm wanting to prohibit. If someone wants to write a player with an export option, I'd support that, as there are *many* legal uses for copying part or all of a movie.
I'd prefer to just distribute the library in such a way that it has no functions directly of use to a player, so that movies could be read through the codec, but not written. Not that it'd be hard to add, but so that it'd be clean the way it was released.
Actually, there is one license solution to this...
Use something incompatible with the LGPL and BSDL, have it grant the same sort of rights, allow linking, etc, but prevent the addition of any functions to the codec, all changes required to be in a seperate library or implemented by the maintainer. But primarily, prevent distribution of the library with any application the primary obvious purpose of which isn't to *view* movies in realtime. This was the library couldn't be modified into a pirate player, and applications couldn't include it (like a GPL module) by default, they'd have to fit the license (be primarily a DVD player) to use it...
This way any player could include the codec, and pirates could even use it, or a player which existed mainly for making copies, but they'd have to link to a site which distributes it and have the user start the procedure, which would be enough to show that it was a seperate package.
Just throwing ideas out. If I ever get close to finished something like this I'll make sure I talk to a bunch of prominent people and/or a lawyer or two before I do anything.
I'd prefer to have a decent open source and easily modifiable player instead of having to crack some buggy incompatible commercial player.
Especially because I'm sure the players for Linux are being written just to satisfy the "There are no players - we have to write our own" claim. The companies won't bother making them work well, or supporting other fringe OSes. If we don't make it work, why will they?
Two ways, one is to make sure the code is never run, so the click-through doesn't become an issue. That may mean manually decrypting the install files as well, or finding an older version, which would be less protected.
Or, simply by using the information gained from hearing about DeCSS's attempts (without actually looking at their code) enough could probably be assumed to aid in analyzing device communication and reverse engineering that way.
Clean-rooming the Xing source isn't what I meant to say, I meant that Xing (or another software player) would be disassembled and analyzed, this information would be sent to the programmers, who not having seen Xing's source, or DeCSS wouldn't be influenced by it.
As long as the programming is done clean-room, that should be all that matters. A way to distribute clients without an actual player key would be helpful though.
The "subliminal messages" article was apparently an April Fools joke. I'm making this reply for the benefit of future web searchers who hit this comment without knowing surrounding detail. See the comments on the "subliminal messages" article.
I was playing around with the idea of signing the appropriate NDAs so that I could create a free/almost free set of binary libs. Then I took a gander at the DVD faq. End of that idea.
Straight from the faq, here's why:
"The official DVD specification books are available from Toshiba after signing a nondisclosure agreement and paying a $5,000 fee. One book is included in the initial fee; additional books are $500 each. "
"Implementation of DVD products and use of the DVD logo for non-promotional purposes requires additional $10,000 format and logo licenses."
"Any company making DVD products must license the patented technology from a Philips/Pioneer/Sony pool, a Hitachi/Matsushita/Mitsubishi/Time Warner/Toshiba/Victor pool, and from Thomson. Total royalties are about 6% (minimum $6) for a DVD-Video player, 6% (minimum $6) for a DVD-ROM drive, 5% (minimum $2) for a DVD decoder, and 10 cents for a DVD disc."
"Dolby licenses Dolby Digital decoders for $0.26 per channel."
On the bright side, getting the specs of CSS seems to be free. So it technically shouldn't be a problem to create a legal binary lib--as long as you don't mind selling off your soul in the NDAs that they'll make you sign.
For the libs necesary to drive a fully functional dvd player, however, you have a $15,000 startup fee, together with a $7/player distribution fee. While I am fond of open source, I'm not willing to bring my bank account balances down to $0 to support it.
...other "rebel" operating systems, like {Net,Free,Open}BSD and BeOS?
I know my karma is probably going to take a beating for this, but... hey, I could have AC'd, so be nice. Anyway, here goes....
Does anyone else think that quote from Linus at the end of the piece sounded more like a market-droid than the real Linus talking? "Their digital video and audio products will greatly enhance the Linux multimedia experience" ??? Let's hope Transmeta doesn't have him so insulated from reality now with quote-spewing PR flacks, that he ends up completely out of touch with reality, like Bill Gates....
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
I know this isn't a software player, but if your goal is to play movies (rather than make a political statement,) it should work fine. (Not that I disagree with the political statement.)
MSK
DVD stands for Digital Versatile Disks. The DVD consortium deliberately didn't want them called Digital Video Disks because they want them to be used for everything from computer software, to audio and video content. Its all supposed to go on DVD and it may all end up using the CSS encryption standard.
Well, I don't see why DVD CCA couldn't use its encryption standard to bully people and get an unfair competitive advantage in the Information Technology marketplace the same way Micros~1 used its Windos monopoly. After all, you won't be allowed to reverse engineer to make it work if you don't license it from them.
The King is dead, long live the King.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
I still disagree that it's unrealistic. MPEG-4 was not around when these formats were introduced. And I think we could even do better than that. MPEG-1 is 3 generations behind, in terms of space and quality. DVD's use MPEG2, which is great for quality, but not necessarily for space. I still think that if you combine MPEG-4 with a large block format you could get DVD quality under 640 meg. (Basically, the concept of large block compression, is a compression scheme which only has positive returns on large data sets, such as tokenizing on simlarities between data.)
--- "So THAT's what an invisible barrier looks like!" - Time Bandits
One thing we could aim for is to get together and create a competing open format. I know it sounds nuts, but it could be the eventual goal. When Linus first created Linux, he thought of it as just a project for a few people, and it spead like wildfire.
What if we take MPEG-4, combine it with some sort of large block compression, and create a format that will fit DVD quality in 640 megabytes, which will then go on a CDR. Then we convince independent movie studios to support it, and we enjoy independent movies on our computers. If the market for them gets big enough, maybe it will spread to the mainstream stuff. Even if it doesn't, a new point of view probably wouldn't hurt most of us.
Just a crazy idea, but something to consider.
--- "So THAT's what an invisible barrier looks like!" - Time Bandits
I disagree. When most people complain about open-sourcing DVD players, the argument they use is "to make it faster" or "better" or "run smoother" or "look better". None of these things have anything at all to do with the CSS encryption. Theres a simple algorithem, and thats that./p
Dammit. I can't watch movies that I PAID FOR either. I've been trying so hard, but I can't find a VHS player for my laptop anywhere. The EVIL MPAA has struck again.
"To save the planet, I had to go to the worst spot on Earth, and that was Philadelphia." -- Sun Ra
Yay in the fact that the authors intend to keep only the CSS/Dolby/Navigation stuff closed source. Given other comments regarding look-and-feel of DVD players, this gives us a real chance at making the screen look nice.
Boo on the cost. $50 for Dolby 5.1? Not bad, but you may as well buy a component player for your TV after buying all the parts and software. "Buy us because we're the only legal ones" isn't necessarily a great marketing strategy either. And then there's the issue of the MPAA and having to make major portions of the software closed-source.
My guess is you'll see this software bundled with the major distros in the next year or two, which then makes much of this a moot point.
-- Ever notice that fast-burning fuse looks exactly the same as slow-burning fuse? I didn't... (Edgar Montrose)
When did Linus ever have an open source edge? He wrote the original Linux, not out of a desire for a free Unix (like rms's GNU project), but out of a desire to avoid Minix's limitations... and probably a "because I can" deal.
He released the source because he could. There is no reason to hide source code unless you believe that it is a valuable product... most hobbist programmers include source on their web sites. Shareware developers, however, did not.
When the Linux kernel and GNU tools were combined and formed a free Unix-like OS, Linus released the kernel under the GPL. The earlier release was a public domain type of deal.
Linus write Linux because he could, not to change the world. RMS and the FSF worked on GNU because of a fundamental belief that computer code should be free. They sat in the ivory tower of the MIT LCS and worked on GNU, and later got an Office across the river and continued to work on GNU.
FSF have been Open Source advocates. Linus is a programmer whose work, a simple kernel for the 386, happened to complete the picture for a much larger program to recreate Unix. the GNU/Linux designation DOES make some sense, given that Linux was useful to run GNU software (and later all the neat projects that have come since), not because there is a particular love for a kernel.
Alex
How useful would a non-source-code paper about CSS and DeCSS be? A document describing the encryption algorithm and how it is used in thorough detail, but not in the form of source code in some programming language, would be much closer to the "protected speech" most judges are familiar with. Yes, it could still be challenged on trade secret grounds, I suppose.
Just a thought.
The real issue - and I feel this is how DeCSS should be defended - is the right to write a royalty-free clean-room DVD player on any platform. Trying to take this right away is really tough - kind of like trying to take away the right to who can make T-shirts.
Given that, there are a few ways to prevent someone writing a player:
1. patent some critical component. this is pretty tough given that DVD is just an encoding/file format. (then again I hear that GeoWorks seems to have patented WML)
2. don't give out the file format, except on restricted licenses. Buy^H^H^H Lobby for laws (DCMA) that make it illegal to reverse engineer software i.e. DVD players (even though this activity is currently considered fair use).
3. even better, 'lobby' for laws that make any reverse engineering - even black box - illegal. period.
As far as I can tell, DeCSS is being fought with #2.
I'm just waiting for the day when corporations can achieve #3. Then, you'll see how cheap CDs and DVDs are currently. Well, actually most of us will see movies for free - only those of you 'privacy' freaks who don't want to share your personal preferences to get enhanced customer service will have to pay for anything.
Ahh, Monday!
This isn't about getting DVD support for Linux. It's about the right to play DVDs wherever you want. How about NeXTos, OS/2, dunno about BeOS, PalmOS (yeah, right, I know), etc? How about "fair use"? It's nice that Linux will be able to play DVDs, but the MPAA well knows that you can keep most people happy by giving them baubles, not rights.
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
It seems like there are a few problems with DeCSS, like that it was partially based on Xing's player against a perhaps effective click-through license, and that it was packaged in a way that effectively made it a piracy tool.
An unenforceable click-through license that is also probably illegal in several countries as it does'nt respect the consumers' rights. It does'nt take a lawyer to guess that there must be a few countries where trying to impose an illegal clause to the contractee is illegal in itself.
As a sidenote, drifting topics: I was wondering about the comments I've read lately re: the GPL being unenforceable as no money were changing hands. First of all, were that true, click-through licenses would be even weaker than that, and even shrinkwrap licenses for that matter (you pay BEFORE you're able to read the license, and even when you're allowed to read it, it's so unpractical that it must be on shaky legal grounds). And then, the GPL states clearly "since you have not signed [this license] However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works."
By current copyright law, anything you publish is under your copyright, and therefore falls under its restrictions, namely that you can claim rights to derivative works and distribution. As such distribution and modification are usually prohibited, it's foolish to claim you are not aware of the rest of the provisions in it as soon as you start exercising them.
I wonder how you intend to stop EVERYONE from buying DVDs.
This is just silly. Nowhere in his "60's rant" did he claim to be able to "stop EVERYONE from buying DVDs." You can't even stop everyone from espousing completely rediculous points of view such as neo-nazism or pro-Microsoft FUD, much less take on a huge, well entrenched and well financed trust of media conglomerates.
The poster is encouraging those of us who care enough about this issue to be concerned to not fall for a closed-source trap which will allow the aforementioned trust of conglomerates to deflect public interest from the issues at hand, quite possibly undermine the DeCSS defense, and allow them to continue to dictate terms of usage to consumers in violation of the law[1].
Whether or not you agree with the views espoused, your characterization of his comments to mean he is out to force EVERYONE to abide by his views is simply absurd. He is trying to convince, not coerce. And an ever growing number of us are convinced.
[1]See previously posted legal arguments regarding how (a) the DVD CCA is an illegal trust, (b) how region coding is in violation of international trade law, and (c) how CSS prevents fair use, in direct violation of law in several countries including Germany.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
It seems like there are a few problems with DeCSS, like that it was partially based on Xing's player against a perhaps effective click-through license, and that it was packaged in a way that effectively made it a piracy tool.
... well, perform anatomically impossible actions. A server in a country outside the USA can host the CSS-Auth code, much like we downloaded secure crypto from non-USA sites.
I propose that 'we' should clean-room reverse engineer the spec. It should be just the CSS part, the minimum necessary to let a seperate player play the movie, specifically it shouldn't do any actual file access, or compile to a standalone program.
If we avoid any legal complications, such as possible license violations, or making it a tool to specifically break copyright, we should be alright.
And if it's against the DMCA, well, it's a USA law, and quite frankly, the MPAA can go
But, anyways, cleanly reverse engineer the code, make all details of the process and the end result public.
That way anyone can use it. I'd love to see hardware that ignores CSS. It'd rock to buy a DVD player that didn't just have region bypass, but didn't include the concepts of regions at all.
I will boycott DVDs (the movies on them, not the hardware, or writable, etc) until the MPAA gets the hell out of my business. What I watch, when I watch it, how I watch it, and in what 'region' I watch it is none of their business. I won't let them use my own technology against me.
And when I say 'we', I'm serious. I'm a coder, not the best, but pretty good. I've seen the source to DeCSS, so I shouldn't be involved in that segment, but I'm going to research clean-room reverse engineering to see how much can be known and still have it 'clean', and then I'll start to describe the process, to the best of my ability, for others to use. Supposedly the keys are easy to crack, even if you don't start with a specific key for plaintext, as long as you understand a few of their mistakes. This will be ideal, because starting with a player key might make it harder to claim it was cleanly reversed. In fact, if there's a way to automate this process, and get it down under a minute or so, every player could determine its own key by cracking the ones on the disk when first installed, thus meaning we don't have to actually distribute anything they could object to under international laws.
Anyone in Iraq willing to run a server? (If you can think of any country less willing to cooperate with pushy US megacorps, let me know.)
I don't know if I'm the only one with mixed reactions to this. On one hand it's nice to see a blessed player on the market, but at what cost?
Besides the fact that this is a binary for pay distro that probally won't work a couple kernel and library revisions down the line I'm more fearful of how this can damage the current MPAA cases.
The gov't case against Microsoft was hurt when Netscape was gobbled up by AOL. There's no question that the MPAA's next move will be to say "Hey there's Linux software now. There is no reason for anyone to have DeCSS. There is no reason for anyone to do any reverse engineering. Only hackers use DeCSS. And we all know hackers are Evil." And judging by the beating geeks have been taking in court I'm very fearful of the outcome.
it does nothing about the basic idiocy of CSS, and the ability of the MPAA to dictate where you watch movies, and what players you watch on.
Look at the basics of CSS, and you'll also realize that DIVX isn't dead it's just hiding. All you need is an Internet-connected DVD player with a RAM-based key.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
In your recent article about the protests in DC over the copyright act you quoted the MPAA as saying that "linux DVD players were available". I am dissapointed that the reporter failed to ask what players were available and then communicate that information to the protesters. More importantly, I feel that by omitting the fact that no DVD players for linux are presently available commercially the article was biased towards the MPAA and portrayed the protesters in an unfair light. I suspect your readers (like myself) would have been interested to know that no linux DVD player exists (legally) as a direct effect of the MPAA suing everyone who has created one.
I would like to request that you publish an addendum to the article noting that no linux DVD players *presently* exist. If you would like additional information about the current state of DVD use under linux, feel free to contact me. I would be happy to provide you with as much information as I have on the issue of linux DVDs. Thanks.
Anyone else think this quote is rather unfortunate? I really didn't think Linus would take this "Businessman's view" of the whole ordeal. Granted it's nice, but they've openly stated that a lot of their code won't be opensource, including the navigation code (which has no copyrights or other trade secrets attached to it AFAIK) Quite honestly, it seems to me that Linus might be losing a bit of his OpenSource Edge...
The release of an "MPAA blessed" DVD player for Linux is a bad thing. Here's why:
Most folks don't realize the underhanded tactics of regionalization and pay-for-CSS licensing. They only realize convenience and the 'poor hackers' inability to watch "The Matrix" on their Linux PCs.
The release of an 'official' DVD player for Linux makes it as convenient to watch DVD movies on Linux as it is on Win32. The 'poor hackes' should be satisfied by that - in the public eye.
The fact that regionalization and licensing of the ability to watch your (owned) movies is still there is not a convenience issue, so most people don't care. If the 'poor hackers' keep complaining about 'consumer rights', the MPAA cronies like CNN will just label us 'anarchists', mention kiddie-porn and bomb-making info that is to be found on-line....
Those 'nasty pervert hackers', always causing trouble...
This is not a step in the right direction. This is an MPAA maneuver to remove the one argument that speaks to the general public. What's needed is a FREE alternative on Win32, to show the masses that they do not have to pay to play DVDs.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
This is an interesting situation; most of us seem to agree that the availability of proprietary DVD-playing software for Linux doesn't really cut it.
Now how do I explain this to my aunt?
Before we could just say that reverse-engineering CSS was necessary to enable us to create a Linux-compatible DVD player. With this no longer the case, we can now say "we need a free/open source DVD player"; but then we need to explain what "free" and/or "open source" mean, and it gets harder; a wrong choice of words could lead someone to believe (mistakenly) that, for example, we're just cheapskates who want everything for nothing.
So here's a challenge: who can come up with a single sentence, say no more than 20 words, which explains why a propietary DVD player for Linux is not sufficient?
Uh-huh, right. Try these scenarios on for size:
- there's no mention that the decoder will be supported for all of the major distributions, let alone minor or alternate language ones.
- What happens if the company is/goes public and a company such as the so-called evil empire (M$, AOL Time Warner, etc. ) buys enough stock to effectively control the decoder. They now effectively also have power to control my access (changing a closed spec, etc.) so as to render any investment I may have made in the DVD player and/or DVD's moot without my having a say so.
- Lastly, a closed source decoder means that I have no idea how well the decoder is written, whether it does other things (like tracking my usage patterns, etc.), how well it obeys system rules, does it work with all video cards, etc.
So thanks but no thanks. I'll vote with my money to continue the fight for a control free solution like deCSS.So if I don't happen to be running Linux on a main distribution,I'm still locked out of playing movies I paid for (if I were willing to buy CSS encoded DVDs in the first place, which I am not --I'm boycotting the damn MPAA until this thing is resolved).
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
<60s style rant>
... in some ways this makes the situation worse. DeCSS was designed to provide a means to create a linux dvd player. However now the battle is more important then the original problem was. The lawsuites and prosocution of innocent people has changed what the battle is over. It started over the desire for a linux dvd player, it has become a fight for some of our fundamental rights.
This seems to be a way for the opposition to change the focus of the battle. Soon you'll hear them say "see if all of the linux users had just been willing to wait they would have had a *legal* means of viewing their dvds." Now fewer people are going to think that DeCSS is important. Fewer voices means less real change. Less chance of our being able to defend ourselves in the future. The outcome of the whole DeCSS problem is more important then if a few people want to watch dvds on linux.
None of us should use this dvd player. Not a single one of us should even buy a dvd. If we do, we are supporting their efforts, their lawsuites, and their PACs. If we want change we have to hit them where it hurts in the pocketbooks. </60s style rant>
Environmentalists are their own worst enemy. ~tricklenews.com
And not just that. As PC users, we want flexibility. I want to manipulate the video stream. I want to be able to stop a frame, capture it, and perhaps make a parody. In a film-making class, studying such things one frame at a time is one way of learning the craft.
There are just so many legitimate uses of DVD and digital media. I can't even think of all of them on the spot. To the MPAA: You never had any issue with how your movies are used. True, if we publish anything defamatory, you can sue. That not copyright law. Copyright law only extends to distribution, and many of are willing to abide my those laws! Who gave you the authority to dictate use terms upon us? Whatever gave you the authority to choose our OS for us?
And I am not even saying that this is an us-vs-you issue. By us I mean you too, in the future, when your future studios can't and won't be able to use these locked-in materials. Ever think about that? Don't tell me that the Warner-Fox-MGM-blah consortium will remain bed-fellows forever?