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Jon Bringing WMV9 to Linux
julie-h writes "DVD Jon has done it again. This time it wasn't Apple the target, but Microsoft's WMV9 video format. There is as always a working Proof of Concept program with screenshots."
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He's just a front for a large group of hackers. He's talented, but he doesn't just sit around and do all this by himself.
I have a mother in law who is Hungarian, when she visits, she watches hungarian language programming, offered only in, windows media format.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Of course, noone in the linux community give a ripe fuck about whether or not the code they run is legal.
Fool!
That's all we care about. Why do you think we make so much of an issue about companies making exclusive deals to release video and audio in formats that don't have any sort of official support from the format creator? It's not like we own DVD-audio players and our music only comes in SACD; the ability to play WM9 is only several hundred lines of code away and yet we're expected to purchase a completely different operating system to be able to play them.
The sad story about using "illegal" code in Linux (isn't libdvdread still like this?) is that it is often more useful than the a) hard to find b) not that great altenative. I personally find that where there is both a commercial and free version of a linux program ported from Windows, the commercial version acts like cripple-ware.
Direct away from face when opening.
If not, then it's merely a DMCA violation.
What DVD John has done might be legally dubious, but it is certainly not immoral or unethical.
The worst thing about this is that if software companies actually *supported* Linux, they would never have to deal with any of this. They are forcing people to crack copy protection so they can view media that they purchased online. I don't really understand it. There's Windows Media Player for Mac OS X and its market share is roughly equal to that of Linux. It really wouldn't be that hard for Microsoft to release a generic codec pack for Linux.
Yeah - but he's the one who get his "brass ones" nailed to the Inquisition chair every time some DMCA twit gets a knot in his gonch.
one better than mcleodeight
WMV9 is a fairly new codec that does not have native support for anything but Windows. If you have it working in Linux, that's because you're running x86 and are using the Windows dll to decode it. If you're not running on x86 or aren't using a closed source library, you're not watching WMV9, but an older WMV codec.
Personally, I'm quite happy to see this. For one thing, using the dll is slow; too slow to run on my Epia. For another thing, an open source decoder means it should eventually make it to VNC on my Mac. A fast cross-platform decoder. Yes, please!
...note that this type of work may become illegal if the EU embraces software patents.
As you're in the one region of the world that seems to not be bowing down to corporate interests at every opportunity, please do what you can to ensure it doesn't happen.
I *want* to watch video on my Linux box; I don't want to have to buy MS product just so my kids can watch movies that we've paid for.
Oh, I dunno. the last time they tried that 'round these parts the Økokrim prosecution got slapped down by the courts. Since it appears to be a solution based around the VC-1 standard, and not using anything proprietary as far as I can tell, the likelyhood of Økokrim trying for a second charge is ... well, I'd say low, but not non-existent.
Their chances of getting a conviction if they try approach zero though.
It wouldn't surprise me if someone could find a patent that covered the ogg work too.
Go ahead, bet the farm on it, and I'll cover a tenner of it, betting on ogg being clean. That gauntlet was thrown down 2+ years ago by the ogg/vorbis folks who after the mp3 camp claimed there had to be an infringement AIUI, mailed a copy of the code to the fahnhoffer (sp, please, I'm american and I couldn't spell that right if it was painted on the friggin wall) legal folks and dared them to find an infringment. 2 years later, there has been no further saber rattling by the fahnhoffer people.
Besides, if you'll take a 192 kilobit mp3, and compare it to an about 160 kilobyte variable rate ogg, about a g7 quality, I challenge you to an a/b test where you have no idea which is which. BUT, you'll very reliably pick the ogg as the best sounding of the two, and do it well over 95% of the time.
Hell, my ears are 70 years old and I wore out 3 rifle barrels before I ever bought any earmuffs, so they aren't cherry ears by any means (Carhart notches 120 db deep for instance), but I did that comparison and picked the ogg nearly 100% of the time.
Gawd I get tired of hearing winderz sheeple claim the linux camp is nothing but a bunch of thieves. Is your copy of winderz legal? More than likely its a bit of a grey market from some cloner. If I had any M$ on site, it would be 100% legal, but I've never owned an M$ product other than whats in the roms of some of my vintage computers, and I don't intend to expand that, ever... If I need dos for something, its drdos-7.03 that gets booted.
You may have intended that to be sarcasm, but it wasn't taken that way.
No Cheers, Gene
Q. What's a valid patent?
A. One that hasn't been tested in court.
Who's to say that there's any valid IP in WMV9 ? Of all organisations, MS and the US Patent Office are the last I'd trust to tell me.
You only really need a decoder, because there's plenty of other, much more open formats to encode into when you're on a Linux system.
WMV is a closed, proprietary codec. Please don't encode your files into that format. }:)
-Z
That is most definately the WRONG way to go about it.
The RIGHT way is to push content providers to use technologies that we don't have to license, such as Vorbis, Theora, MPEG-1, Dirac, etc.
Imagine if all the percieved gaps in Linux were fixed the same way... People using Linux will want photoshop, so license Photoshop for Linux, rather than creating The GIMP.
Pay the license fee to get DVD decryption in a Linux player, but it must be binary-only, and limited to the same features you find in Windows DVD players (no DVD-backups for you!).
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant