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Legitimate uses for DeCSS
Tabercil writes "Interesting article at the Washington Post, which among other things points out that DeCSS does have valid uses, and that the industry's paranoia over DeCSS is overblown." A reasonable mainstream summary of all the DVD related legal hype. Interesting that the libdvdcss folks have never had a bump with the law, but instead DeCSS takes all the brunt even tho nobody uses it.
the TRUTH is that there is no LEGITIMATE use of CSS on the first place
..if the MPAA is going to sue the Washington Post for the same reason that they sued 2600. I doubt they've got the chutzpah for that legal fight, but it would be quite interesting if they did.
--K.
Sig: Bad people happen. Try to avoid being one of them.
I've had no problems playing DVDs using videolan on windows, but no luck whatsoever with a variety of closed source programs such as powerdvd and windows media player. Same DVD, same drive, same operating system. Fully licensed commercial crap = don't work, open source = works beautifully and will even rip it for me, add subtitles and make an SVCD out of it so I can watch a German language flick with my American friends.
Glad to see the Post gets it.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
I think that we should allow what we of weak taste call "movies and music" studios to succeed. Allow them perfect control of everything. You will not be able to do anything without paying them but run a Commodore 64 that is disconnected from the Internet.
The result?
The complete, total and utter collapse of the above Industries. People will not be able or willing to afford even to buy a book online because of crippling proprietary formats and greedy prices. No one will be interested in anything digital anymore, disconnected we will peacefully slip back to telling stories by the fireplace (reading them off the C64's screen that is).
Or maybe not.
If you outlaw the law, only criminals will have laws
Another good use for parents can be the removal of Macrovision protection. It allows you to put the DVD on VHS so you can give the kids the movie in a format that's a little less likely to be destroyed in ten seconds.
If you have a DVD burner, you could also give the kids the back-up version instead of the original to avoid the same problem(loss of the original).
Solution one is probably beyond most parent's computer ability, and solution two is pricey(DVD burner ~=$300). However, in comparison to having the kid ruin the originals it can be cheaper since X x $20 = Big bucks if your kid scratches a movie every other week.
The movie studios want to have it so that you only own the disk, but restrict you like you only license the content. If you are paying "only" for the disk, you should be allowed to back it up. If you only payed for the content then the studios should replace the disk no matter what happens to it since what you payed for was "the right to watch the movie when you want to."
the TRUTH is that there is no LEGITIMATE use of CSS on the first place
What? You want to go back to table layout and <font>!?
Somebody who went to school with me made a crypto module for the Mono platform based on the Skipjack cipher used in the Clipper chip. I wonder what it'd be like if DVD CCA's CSS were re-implemented as yet another general-purpose stream cipher for a popular platform's crypto interface. Interchangeable modules, each with a substantial non-infringing use, make it harder for the DMCA police to point a finger at a guilty party.
Will I retire or break 10K?