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.

Comments

I wonder...

[kien]

..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.

Not to mention open source works..

[wfberg]

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.

An alternate history

[lateralus]

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.