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DeCSS Reply Brief Posted

Posted by Hemos on from the fighting-back dept.

Thanks to Macki from 2600 who sent the DeCSS Reply Brief Filed on 2600. You can read it in all of the appropriate formats - the next hearing is May 1, at the 2nd Court of Appeals in NY.

1 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. Re:DeCSS by molog · · Score: 5
    The DeCSS program itself was written for Windows because Windows had the DVD driver support necessary!

    It wasn't the drivers. It was suport for the file system that is used on DVDs. Linux did not have support for the filesystem at the time so it was developed on Windows to see if it would indeed work.

    Quite simply, what DeCSS does is read and de-encrypt the raw MPEG-2 data off of a DVD. From there, it is pretty straightforward to decode the MPEG-2 and re-encode at a lower bitrate using DivX -- and then it's the whole napster nightmare for the MPAA.

    No, the sound and video is not in MPEG-2 format. It is in a raw uncompressed format. Remember that while MPEG is good compression there is a price to pay. The color is not as distinct and the images are not as clear. Not too noticable but there is a trade off to be made. Plus even with DivX, the resulting file is still around 650MB. That is not very small. Even with broad band that takes a while to download. Most people don't want to bother saturating their connection for that long. There are some but not many.

    MPAA != DVDCCA. Yes, the DVDCCA is concerned that their monopoly on DVD players is in jeopardy because of the release of the key. But that is entirely separate from DeCSS, a **Windows program** to decode DVDs.

    Well then what about css-auth, the Linux version of DeCSS which some of the code is used by the LiViD for playing of DVDs? I think the intent was to allow projects like LiViD to show up. Decrepting the VOBs(the files that on the DVD that contain the raw video and audio) was needed to be done before a player could be made. I followed the events of the different groups trying to break the encryption for a long time. DeCSS came on the scene and it was instantly seen as a way to play DVDs.
    Molog

    So Linus, what are we doing tonight?

    --
    So Linus, what are we going to do tonight?
    The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!