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CSS Decryption Library Released by Videolan.org
javilon writes "libdvdcss is the cross-platform library used by vlc, the VideoLAN Client, to access DVDs with transparent CSS decryption. It is the first library based on the vlc codebase, but others are planned.
VideoLAN is a project of students from the École Centrale, Paris. Coming from a research background they could have some legal coverage to fight the RIAA in France.
" VLC is currently the best DVD player for Linux. apt-get install vlc-gtk for you deb heads. Check it out. It's not 100%, but its pretty damn good.
You should take a look at a newer version of vlc - I submitted a patch to allow full-screen xvideo playback a few versions ago. libdvdcss has many advantages over libcss, including not requiring the region to be set on a DVD drive as well as being supported on more platforms (windows, BeOS, linux, *BSD)
o/~ Join us now and share the software
Imagine the prospect of france being on the right end of an argument!
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
"RIAA in France." Recording Industry Association of America... In France... That alone is incredibly silly, but what does the RIAA have to do with CSS? I thought that was MPAA?
Peace,
Amit
ICQ 77863057
[o]_O
After browsing through the pages, it seems that they mean that it's something to let you transparently decrypt CSS. The library lets you access a DVD as a block device, as if it didn't have any encryption at all. The page for the library itself is here.
First off, VLC is pretty cool. I tried it a while back, and it worked almost perfectly. Just like a DVD player should, under any OS. Hats off to its creators.
But the CSS crack is old news by now. While the MPA (not the RIAA) is entangled in futile litigation, we're watching movies. We have been for a long time. Dave Touretsky's gallery of CSS descramblers (http://cs.cmu.edu/~dst) has grown to an enormous size, there are several Copyleft anti-DVD CCA shirts at every LUG meeting, and the algorithm is very well understood by now. I propose that we consider this a victory of information and move on to other fronts... There's plenty else to fight.
-John
Regardless of the moral stance you may take on the whole RIAA copyright infringement circus, there is a bit of irony here.
The business side of the the recording arts, has made it's fortune from technology, with unrelentless greed. The multi-billion dollar industry exists only because someone invented everything from the motion picture through the eight track to the digital media.
The recording arts business embraced every chunk of technology to come along, and has sucked it for all it's worth.
Overwhelming greed pushed the industry into releasing material in digital form, not a huge desire to increase the quality of the product they sell.
Now it has backfired. There probably hasn't been a CD produced that is any good, that hasn't been converted to an MP3 and spread out on the net. The same will happen for movie DVD's.
I personally think this is wrong, but that is irrellevant, it will happen.
The irony is that the golden goose that made the business side of the recording arts what it is (technology) is what is going to sink it. They never will be able to encode digital format in a way that some geek can't crack, an still have something that will play in a cheap player. They won't quit releasing digital media, because it is way cheaper to produce than the analogue version (lp, cassette, vhs), and they won't be able to stop pirates.
If bands wanna make money, get a tour bus and hit the road. Put your albums out for free on the net, they are going to get there anyway. I guess actors can do the same with live performances. The business side is a huge leach that it was created by technology, and is now taking it's lumps from it.
It's easy to write songs, you just sit down and write them?