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xine and dvd licensexine and dvd licensePosted Oct 16, 2003 2:14 UTC (Thu) by elanthis (guest, #6227)Parent article: A Review of LindowsOS 4.0 "even inserting an unencrypted DVD promptly directs the user toward purchasing a Lindows DVD player - a commercial edition of xine with a license for DVD decoding, although even a plain xine would play the DVD just fine." "Normal Xine", with some external plugins, can play DVDs, but not *legally* (in the US and some other countries, anyways). Say what you will about how dumb that is, if you intentionally buy a DVD, you are agreeing that you don't mind the license requirements (if you *do* mind, then you shouldn't be buying DVDs!), and you thus should follow the (admittedly infuriating) laws and only use a licensed decoder. Not to mention that using a non-licensed decoder *could* get you in trouble if the MPAA starts pulling RIAA moves, so having a licensed decodor would be a plus. But, for the price of Lindows, a DVD player should come standard; $50 versions of Windows and $60 hardware decoders can manage to include the license fee well enough.
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xine and dvd license Posted Oct 16, 2003 3:20 UTC (Thu) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link] elanthis seems to have swallowed some of the MPAA's propaganda. (He seems also to have missed the distinction between encrypted and unencrypted DVDs, but I won't comment further on that.)The posting above is unnecessarily alarmist. While Lindows might get in trouble for distributing unlicensed DVD players (it would be hard for the consortium to argue at this late date that their trade secret remains legitimately secret, particularly in light of events in Norway courts), nobody could get in trouble for having installed one. Similarly, nobody buying a DVD has agreed, by that act, to any onerous licensing restrictions. They've just bought a disc, and are subject to nothing more stringent than ordinary copyright law. Indeed, they have an implicit license beyond its provisions: in the U.S., the Uniform Commercial Code implies that they are allowed to do anything they need to do to make full use of the product they have paid for. If the box didn't list restrictions, the vendor isn't allowed to add any that can be discovered only after the box is opened.
xine and dvd license Posted Oct 16, 2003 5:23 UTC (Thu) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link] I thought he said it was an unencrypted DVD. Wouldn't that mean no CSSand therefore no DMCA problems?
xine and dvd license Posted Oct 26, 2003 11:43 UTC (Sun) by ekj (guest, #1524) [Link] "Normal Xine", with some external plugins, can play DVDs, but not *legally* (in the US and some other countries, anyways). Say what you will about how dumb that is, if you intentionally buy a DVD, you are agreeing that you don't mind the license requirements (if you *do* mind, then you shouldn't be buying DVDs!), and you thus should follow the (admittedly infuriating) laws and only use a licensed decoder.Been drinking the Kool-Aid, have we ? Your thougths are exactly the ones the IP-cartel would like you to have, but thankfully you're wrong. A movie (typically) is a copyrigthed work. Thus it's distribution and COPYING is governed by a set of laws called copyrigth-laws. Nowhere in these laws does it say that you have to purchase a "approved" player to access a copyrigthed work that you have legally bougth. In the case of ENCRYPTED DVDs the DMCA makes additional trouble, since bypassing the protection is illegal even in the cases where the access itself is legal. But the DMCA is totally irrelevant for UNENCRYPTED DVDs like the one discussed here. Typical DVDs doesn't come with any license saying anything about which players can or should be used. (atleast none of the many dvds I have came with such a thing.) And even if they did, a court would be very unlikely to uphold them. Ask yourself; Do you think a court would uphold a "EULA" printed on the inside of the back-cover of a book saying that the book can only legally be read through glasses licensed and approved by the BPAA ? If not, why do you think movies are different ?
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