xine and dvd license

xine and dvd license

Posted Oct 16, 2003 3:20 UTC (Thu) by ncm (subscriber, #165)
In reply to: xine and dvd license by elanthis
Parent article: A Review of LindowsOS 4.0

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.

---

(Log in to post comments)